Asia Times: Soured diplomatic relations and extensive monitoring along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has led to a steep fall in trade between the two countries. In the last two years, more than 70% of Afghanistan’s trade has shifted to Iran, China and India. Iran is now Afghanistan’s biggest trade partner, a position held by Pakistan before 2016. Click here
1TV: Afghan government has banned import of saffron to encourage to domestic production. The ban was announced by the country’s ministry of agriculture, irrigation and livestock which said that it had requested the ban from President Ashraf Ghani who approved it. Click here to read more (external link).
Associated Press: A company founded by a London-based banker signed agreements Friday with the government of Afghanistan to explore for gold and copper in the north of the country. Centar Ltd. said it hopes to begin exploration in two sites next year and would within a year become one of the largest private-sector employers in the
1TV:For centuries, most of the water from Afghanistan’s main river basins has poured to Iran and Pakistan. Afghanistan has started building dams and this has caused concerns in the neighboring countries. “On water management, I would like to make it clear that I would give away my head but not Afghanistan water,” Ghani said at
Pakistan Today: Pakistan must consider working on a bilateral water-sharing agreement with Afghanistan. Leading jurist on international law Makhdoom Ali Khan stated this in a written reply to the Supreme Court. “Afghanistan is now planning to build 12 dams, in cooperation with the World Bank and India, the flow of water from River Kabul is expected to
The Star: For six years, John Sopko has served as Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction with a broad mandate to assess how U.S. cash for Afghan reconstruction is spent. His investigations have found that billions of dollars in American aid has been lost to corruption, waste and futile efforts in Afghanistan suggests Canada has likely
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty September 9, 2018 Gas-rich Turkmenistan has inaugurated a refurbished and expanded Soviet-era power plant that it hopes will help it boost exports to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov on September 8 attended ceremonies for the opening of the $1.2 billion electricity plant near the Central Asian’s southeastern region of
1TV: In an interview with German’s Bild newspaper, Ghani said that it was crucial to keep Afghans from fleeing the country by exposing the “false belief that the streets in Germany are paved with gold. That’s not the case.” This is not the first time that Ghani criticizes migration of Afghans to Europe. In 2016, Ghani
Ariana: It has been eight years since the Afghan government begun collecting the debt of the old Kabul Bank which collapsed in 2010. During former President Hamid Karzai’s tenure, $370 million of the bank’s debt was collected by the government from the overall debt of $987 million. However, since the opening of the Kabul Bank’s case,
Anadalou Agency: A notorious Afghan banker and former international poker player has died in a Kabul prison of heart attack, officials and local media confirmed on Friday.According to local Tolo News, Sherkhan Farnood, the former chair of defunct private lender Kabul Bank, died in prison at age 57 of a heart attack. It added that Ghafoor Ahmad, Defense