Afghan paramilitary forces working with the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long been a staple in the US war on terrorism in Afghanistan and the border region with Pakistan. The problems associated with these militias take on new significance given the recent momentum in talks between the US government and the Taliban about the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. Whose interests do the militias represent? How can they be integrated into a peace agreement – if at all? Will their use value for the US in future counterterrorist operations outweigh the case for closing them down in the service of human rights and a sustainable peace? The militias are at least nominally controlled by their CIA paymaster, but to what extent will the operations of the CIA be monitored and streamlined with overall US policy towards Afghanistan?
Related Resources
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What Racism Costs Us All
Joseph Losavio. “What Racism Costs Us All.” IMF. September 2020. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/09/the-economic-cost-of-racism-losavio.
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The Economic Cost of Gender-Based Discrimination in Social Institutions
Gaëlle Ferrant and Alexandre Kolev. “The economic cost of gender-based discrimination in social institutions.” OECD Development Centre. June 2016.