The news has been full of the news in Toulouse, south-west France, about a fearless terrorist shooting young soldiers and three children from a Jewish school. The military victims were Frenchmen like the murderer himself, likewise of North African ex-colonial descent. The crime in itself is horrendous, especially the cold-blooded murder of little children. However [...]
The UN has just revealed staggering figures. Despite promises to the contrary, in one year, the production of Afghan heroin has increased by 61 %. Before the US and NATO intervention which began in 2001, the official figures were 185 tons a year (a symbolic figure as everyone knows that illicit production fuelled both Taliban and [...]
Oct 21st, 2011
This is a lead interview with me on the state of Afghan women published this week in ‘L’Humanité daily in Paris http://www.humanite.fr/monde/carol-mann-%C2%AB-pour-les-afghanes-la-situation-n%E2%80%99-pas-progresse%C2%A0%C2%BB-481800
Sep 25th, 2011
For the last ten years, I have been going just about every year first to Pakistan, then Afghanistan, coming back with long reports published on the FemAid site. Now in under one year, I’ve been twice to DRC, to lecture in Kisangani university on gender issues, on the way to help setting up the [...]
Sep 20th, 2011
As we have all seen, the press has been solemnly covering Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination in Kabul on September 20th. To quote just the Guardian: “Afghanistan Peace Process in Tatters”. It won’t take much to view him as a martyr who could have saved Afghanistan, much on the lines of Ahmad Shah Massoud, canonized by the [...]