Afghan News Snippets

Paper - Conflict between Settlers and Nomads in Afghanistan. James A. Michener's book Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan (published in 1963) captured the imagination of a generation of Americans who wanted to know much more about this remote country in the mountains of Central / South Asia. The merchants and nomads who traveled along Afghanistan's roads have diminished in numbers. Trucks have replaced camels and a modern society is slowly eroding the nomadic life of Afghanistan. The nomadic people of Afghanistan still exist but in state of conflict with the ever-growing settled areas. Read a detailed paper by Dr. Antonio Giustozzi entitled Typologies of Nomad-Settler Conflict in Afghanistan, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), January 2018 (40 pages). https://areu.org.af/archives/publication/1801

Paper - ISIS and South Asia. Kabir Taneja has wrote a 12-page paper entitled The Fall of ISIS and its Implications for South Asia, January 2018. IT is posted on the web site of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
http://cf.orfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ORF_Issue_Brief_220_ISI_all.pdf

U.S. Senators Question War Effort. In a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee State Department and Defense officials attempted to explain the administrations goals in Afghanistan. Many of the committee members expressed concern that the new strategy will not achieve its goal of forcing the Taliban into peace talks. They noted that the Taliban control more Afghan territory now than they have since the October 2001 U.S. invasion. Read "U.S. senators concerned Trump's Afghanistan strategy will not succeed", Reuters, February 6, 2018.

$45B Pricetag / Year for War. The Afghan conflict is costing the United States about $45 billion a year and that cost is likely to continue for years to come. (Military Times, Feb 6, 2018).

---