CEPSAF
Centre for Peace & Security Afghanistan – CEPSAF: Greater Middle Eastern Research and Analysis
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“My body had already half sunk into the ice-cold water because the people smuggler had squeezed 23 asylum seekers in a dinghy designed to fit eight” – Chapter 25
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Chapter Twenty-Five My sisters flailed their hands, screaming ‘Mour’. ‘Please save my daughters!’ Mour cried above the deafening outboard motor noise. She banged her head against a man to the right; her headscarf had slipped to her shoulders. The man wouldn’t release his grabbing of Mour’s arms. Another asylum seeker held the man’s belt…
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Bush’s Afghan Intervention: Who Decided What and Why
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*By Dr Sharifullah Dorani Introduction This essay explains what the George W Bush Administration’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) Strategy in Afghanistan was ― a strategy that marked the decision to intervene in Afghanistan. It goes further to explain what factors influenced the decision. Domestic influences, personal characteristics of the policymakers and bureaucratic politics…
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“We’d emigrated from the Little Moscow of Kabul to Moscow’s Little Afghanistan” – Chapter 24
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Chapter Twenty-Four For weeks, my only companions were insomnia, nightmares and regrets. I mulled over my response in the past few days leading to our departure from Kabul and wondered if I could’ve done anything to stop Frishta’s death from happening. If only I told her I loved her. She would’ve been with us.…
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“I accepted him, I accept him and I will accept him as my husband, I reply. He says the same words. The nikah is complete. We’re officially wife and husband” – Chapter 23
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Chapter Twenty-Three The middle-aged translator, who had a haircut like Raziq Khan, required a week. After doubling the money he asked for up-front, the man agreed to translate the diary on the spot. Opposite my wobbly chair on the wall had been stuck a photo of the Shrine of Ali; beneath it read: A…
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“Goodbye, my sweet Kabul… Look after my Frishta” – Chapter 22
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Chapter Twenty-Two ‘Zoya, wake up. We’re going,’ Mour’s voice said. ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘We’re leaving.’ ‘I’m not coming.’ ‘Ahmad, it’s 3pm. We’re leaving now.’ Agha’s voice again. I rubbed my eyes and opened them to see a sack by Agha’s legs next to the burning lamb. I realised and jumped to my feet, hitting…
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“Could there be such a world where there was no bombing, no fighting, no hiding in a basement?… Surely, the teenagers on the television lived on another planet” – Chapter 21
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Chapter Twenty-One Baktash and his father’s killings shocked everyone. Shukria, who worried more about Afghanistan losing its identity than her losing her life, supposed ‘high-profile Communists’ who stayed put at their addresses, or rather in the basements of their flat, would meet the same fates as Baktash’s father and Mr Barmak, because the mujahideen…
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“God’s created me Afghan but has denied me the heart” – Chapter 20
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Chapter Twenty I throw a surprise party for my wife’s promotion as King Zahir Shah’s Advisor for Women’s Affairs. Frishta thanks her ‘supportive husband’, me, in her speech, and everyone claps, including Wazir and Baktash, alongside their wives. Our two sons and a daughter play with Wazir and Baktash’s kids. We picnic in the…
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Bush at Camp David: Afghanistan Invasion Policymaking, Part II
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* Introduction Although later decision-making in the George W Bush Administration was conducted in secrecy and without much deliberation, the decision to intervene in Afghanistan, which was part of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), to a certain extent, was deliberate and open. The National Security Council (NSC) held a number…
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Bush in the “Bunker”: Afghanistan Invasion Decision-Making, Part I
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By Dr Sharifullah Dorani* Introduction Although later decision-making in the George W Bush Administration was conducted in secrecy and with little deliberation, the decision to intervene in Afghanistan, to a certain extent, was deliberate and transparent. The National Security Council (NSC) held a number of meetings between 11 September to the day the US…
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“The BBC had imprisoned Afghans since the Soviet invasion in 1979” – Chapter 19
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Chapter Nineteen Everyone in the dimly lit basement shushed as the extended BBC Pashto Service broadcast the night news: This is London. This is the Pashto programme. Agha told mothers to keep their children’s noise down, asking my sisters, and even some adults, to stop flying paper airplanes. I knew the introductory words for…