Afghanistan 2018

Yearbook 2018

Afghanistan. The election to Parliament began on October 20, when nearly 9 million voting Afghans had the opportunity to vote for one of the approximately 2,565 candidates who ran for the House’s 249 seats. Of the candidates, 417 were women, and that is more than ever before. The election had been announced to take place in June 2015, but due to the escalating violence it has been postponed several times. The election applied not only to the national parliament but also to the government in the districts. In an attempt to carry out the election, more than 50,000 soldiers were deployed to protect the polling stations from the Taliban, who had sworn to sabotage it. The election had to be extended in just over 400 of the country’s 21,000 polling stations by one day due to the violence. The highest turnout was in the capital Kabul; the province of Uruzgan had the lowest. A total of 27 civilians and eleven soldiers were killed in the nearly 200 attacks carried out against the election. In Qandahar in the southern part of the country, the violence was forced to postpone the election, partly because the police chief Abdul Raziq, a journalist and a intelligence chief, was killed in an attack. Instead, the election had to be conducted a week later. In early November, the country’s president Ashraf Ghani announced he is running for re-election in the presidential election to be held by April 2019.

• According to Abbreviationfinder: AFG is an three letter acronym for Afghanistan.

According to Countryaah.com, Kabul is the capital city of Afghanistan, a country located in Southern Asia. Among the most serious attacks is the attack on the Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul in January when over 30 people were killed, of them at least 14 foreign nationals. In the same month, an ambulance with explosives drove past a roadblock and into an area in the capital where several foreign embassies, including the Swedish, have their buildings. At least 95 people died in the attack. In April, at least 57 people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated in a crowd outside an election registration office in Kabul. The same month at least ten journalists were killed when a suicide bomber dressed as a journalist blew himself to death. Among the dead were reporters from AFP and the BBC. The act is said to be the bloodiest against journalists since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. In September, 68 people were killed by a suicide bomber who attacked a demonstration in Nangarhar province.

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), at the beginning of October, 2,343 civilians had died so far during the year in suicide attacks. There are as many who died throughout 2017, and that figure was then considered to be the highest so far in the long history of the conflict. Half of the attacks during the year are attributed to the Islamic State (IS) and slightly less than half the Taliban. According to UNAMA, the attacks appear to be mainly aimed at the Shiite Muslim minority. In the first three months of the year alone, the US-led coalition released nearly 1,200 air bombs across Afghanistan, the highest figure for a three-month period in the past 15 years.

The 2014 presidential election was won by independent candidate Ashraf Ghani. In the first round of April, he had gained only 31.6% of the vote, while his main counterpart, Abdullah Abdullah got 45.0%. In the second round of elections in July, Ghani gained 56.4%, while Abdullah gained 43.6%. The surprising result that Abdullah actually declined percentage in the second round was due to the fact that 20% more votes were cast in the second round. The result led to accusations of electoral fraud and a two-month parliamentary crisis. The United States had a huge interest in finding a solution as the military was on its way out of the country. The Foreign Minister therefore personally traveled to Afghanistan in mid-July to force the two candidates to form a unifying government. After two months of further conflict, this was the result. On the 19th. In September, Karzai handed the presidential post to Ghani, who in turn appointed Abdullah as his prime minister for a unifying government. Ghani had been Finance Minister in Karzai’s government from 2002-04. Abdullah had been Foreign Minister in 2001-05 and had stood against Karzai for the 2009 presidential election. Abdullah actually won this election, but due to extensive electoral fraud and US desire, Karzai continued in the presidential post.

In line with the growth of Afghanistan’s armed forces, more and more Taliban and national Afghans managed to infiltrate them. In the period after 2011, they managed to carry out a large number of insider attacks against the Afghan forces and forces from ISAF. The most spectacular attack took place in August 2014, when an insider managed to kill US General Harold J. Greene and wound a host of Afghan and ISAF officers, including a German brigade general. It happened at the training base Qargha west of Kabul. The constant assaults were a challenge to the ISAF training of Afghan soldiers and officers.

On December 10, 2014, the United States Congress published parts of a 600-page report on the United States ‘enormous torture program after September 11, 2001. The report confirmed that one of the United States’ largest torture centers was the Bagram airbase outside Kabul. It was not only Afghans who were tortured there, but victims from all over the world. Despite the publication of the report, it was immediately clear that it would have no political consequences and no executioners or responsible politicians would be brought to justice for their crimes. Afghanistan had since 2002 demanded North American soldiers extradited to prosecution for their crimes in the country. Unsuccessfully.

The United States formally left Afghanistan responsible for the war in the country on December 28, 2014. As the English had to come true in the eighteenth century, the Russians in the 1980s, the United States had to prove that Afghanistan could not be defeated. The United States and its Western allies had lost the war. However, the United States retained 9,800 combat soldiers in the country. In addition, 2,000 NATO soldiers were added. Afghanistan continued to have no right to prosecute North American war criminals, and the United States intended to continue its drone strikes in the country. The war had so far cost the superpower about $ 1,000 billion. US $. It had cost over 40,000 lives in Afghanistan. Most of them civilian. 2.7 million Afghans sat in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan; 660,000 were internally displaced.