Eisa Khan Ayoobi via Al Jazeera: The NUG is struggling with containing the Taliban and addressing internal divisions – [Ghani’s] intra-Pashtun clan politics seems to have made reaching out to the Taliban more difficult. The Taliban leadership are Durrani Pashtun from Kandahar who take pride in being the descendants of “conventional” Afghan rulers like Ahmad Shah Durrani.
Eisa Ayoobi via The Globe Post: Ashraf Ghani and Zalmay Khalilzad have been the most influential Afghan-Americans to impact U.S.-Afghanistan relations over the decades. Their education and Washington-based experience have earned them rhetoric sway and a vastly influential network of friends. However, their ethnonationalism-aspired Afghanistan “vision” has cost the U.S. thousands of lives and “trillions of
The Washington Post: The fight over the “e-taskira,” as the biometric card is known, has dragged on since Ghani took office in 2015. No one has come to blows yet, but heated political battles over whether and how to identify cardholders by ethnicity and “nationality”— a term commonly used here to mean one’s tribe — have disrupted
Ayaz Gul VOA News February 18, 2018 ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s political crisis deepened Sunday when a second provincial governor defied a presidential order for his removal. On Saturday, President Ashraf Ghani’s office approved and announced the appointment of new heads for five provinces, including Samangan in the north, as part of efforts to improve local Afghan
Al Jazeera: While Ghani has systematically forced non-Pashtun leaders out of the unity government, he has surrounded himself with Pashtun ethnonationalist leaders. Ghani has also appointed a handful of Pashtu-speaking advisors and has given them full access to government resources and decision-making authority within the Presidential Palace. Click here to read more (external link).