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April 25, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Financial Times: The actions follow revelations on Thursday that the BND in 2006 spied on Amin Farhang, Afghan trade minister, allegedly because he had sought contacts with the Taliban. The BND placed a spying device in a computer used by Mr Farhang in Kabul, and observed his electronic correspondence, including emails, for six months from June 2006 onwards. Full news...
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April 24, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA News: A top U.S. military commander says Afghanistan could see record levels of violence this year, with many Taliban attacks in eastern Afghanistan originating from across the Pakistani border. Full news...
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April 22, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: About 400 people demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday against skyrocketing food prices, witnesses said, in the country's first protest at food costs rising worldwide. Full news...
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April 22, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN News: Shops and mud-huts owned by Afghan refugees in Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province have been demolished and refugees who still live there have been ordered to vacate the area by the end of April, according to Pakistani officials and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Full news...
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April 21, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The government says free basic healthcare is available within two hours walking distance to 85 percent of the population, from just 9 percent in 2003. But people say they are far from adequate and decent healthcare is available only to those who can afford to pay, travel to the capital city, or go overseas. Full news...
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April 21, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Half of Afghan children are still not going to school and the biggest group missing out on an education are girls, the United Nations said on Monday."We still have 1.2 million girls of school age who do not have access to school in this country," Catherine Mbengue, head of UNICEF in Afghanistan, told the news conference. Full news...
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April 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Middle East Times: During the previous year, an estimated 434,000 Afghans used hashish, 130,000 used opium and 41,000 used heroin, according to the UNODC. Some agencies report higher numbers, but this may be due to their failure to adjust the population base. While the population of Afghanistan is officially listed as 31.8 million, the UNODC figures are based on the figure of 23.8 million people who currently live in Afghanistan. The other 8 million, including refugees in Pakistan and Iran, live outside of Afghanistan. Full news...
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April 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Scarred by decades of turmoil and grief, 66 percent of Afghans suffer from depression or some form of mental disorder, and an increasing number are turning to illegal drugs, a top health official said. Full news...
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April 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Radio Australia: A suicide bomb exploded outside a mosque in Afghanistan overnight, killing 24 people as worshippers were leaving after prayers. Full news...
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April 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Roughly one in every five U.S. troops who have survived the bombs and other dangers of Iraq and Afghanistan now suffers from major depression or post-traumatic stress, an independent study said Thursday. It estimated the toll at 300,000 or more. Full news...
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April 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Ten Afghans have died and more than 100 have fallen ill with liver disease after eating wheat contaminated with a poisonous plant, heightening food insecurity in the country, officials said Thursday. Full news...
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April 17, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN News: Afghanistan would have great potential to ensure food security for its estimated 26.6 million people if donors invested in agricultural infrastructure and/or if the country's over 190,000 hectares of poppy were converted to wheat production, a senior official of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. Full news...
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April 17, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Military interrogators assaulted Afghan detainees in 2003, using investigation methods they learned during self-defense training, according to Pentagon documents released on Wednesday. Full news...
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April 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Khadija Ahadi, the 30-year-old director of Faryat radio station in the western city of Herat, was targeted on April 6 and again on Sunday, said Rahimullah Samandar, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association. Full news...
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April 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: An Afghan legislative committee has drafted a bill seeking to introduce Taliban-style Islamic morality codes banning women from wearing make-up in public and forbidding young boys from wearing female fashions. It also aims to ban women dancers performing during concerts and other public events as well as on television. Full news...
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April 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC: In northern Afghanistan it appears some parents are being driven by poverty and hunger to marry off their daughters at an early age. Jenny Cuffe investigates for Radio 4's Seven Days. Full news...
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April 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: In parliament, well-known warlords are there. In that situation, how do you expect [the] implementation of democracy and the rule of law -- unless those people are removed from their positions and weakened, at least, and educated people are given a chance -- [those] who think positively about the betterment of their country. Not for themselves. Those [warlords] are collecting money and putting the money in their pockets. They do little or nothing for the society and for the people. Full news...
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April 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
WTOP Radio: The U.S. is on the verge of losing the war in Afghanistan, says a former top CIA official who was involved in attempts to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. Full news...
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April 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Age: A recent report by British-based women's rights group Womankind has concluded that Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. Around 80% of women are affected by domestic violence; over 60% of marriages are forced, some of them between elderly men and girls as young as eight; half of Afghanistan's girls are married before the age of 16. Full news...
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April 13, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Afghan detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being transferred home to face closed-door trials in which they are often denied access to defense attorneys and the U.S. evidence being used against them, according to Afghan officials, lawyers and international rights groups. Full news...
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April 10, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Aatash.org: A mass grave containing allegedly more than 100 dead bodies is discovered in Chehl Gazi Village - around 10km west of Mazar-e Sharif city in Afghan north. Full news...
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April 10, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The Afghan-born US Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, has signalled that he will run for the presidency of Afghanistan in elections next year. Full news...
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April 10, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN News: Over 2,200 children are working long hours in dozens of brick-making factories in Nangarhar Province, eastern Afghanistan, to pay off their families' debts, a survey by the Child Action Protection Network (CAPN), an Afghan body, has found. Full news...
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April 7, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Around 40 civilians were killed and 30 wounded in a deadly airstrike by US-led coalition troops in the eastern Nuristan province, officials said on Monday. Local government functionaries and tribal elders claimed coalition warplanes pounded the Shawak Valley in Dowaba district. At least 20 bodies had been pulled out from the debris, they added. Full news...
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April 7, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Feministe.us: It’s like a perfect storm of right-wing policies: The War on Drugs, women’s liberation by way of imperialism, and “freedom” at the barrel of a gun. The vast majority of the world’s opiates originate in Afghanistan. To fight drug production, the solution has been to target individual farmers and destroy their crops — without offering them any other option for survival. Full news...
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April 7, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: More than six years after U.S.-led forces launched a military campaign here against the ruling Taliban movement, drug addiction is fast becoming a major concern for the government. With opium production reaching an all-time high of 6,000 tons last year, according to the United Nations, domestic addiction rates in this nation of nearly 32 million have also soared. A 2005 U.N. report estimated that Afghanistan was home to about 1 million drug abusers. Full news...
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April 5, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: An Afghan woman MP controversially expelled from parliament a year ago for causing "insult" to fellow lawmakers said Saturday she had filed a petition for reinstatement. The war-torn nation's legislature, dominated by former anti-Soviet Islamic warlords, kicked out Malalai Joya after she described fellow MPs as "worse than donkeys and cows" in a television interview last May. Full news...
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April 4, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Despite great progress has been made over the last six years, Afghanistan is still one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, a U.N. official said here on Friday. Full news...
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April 3, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA: Forceful seizure of the properties of the people is a crime that has been committed by most of the warlords of Afghanistan in the last three decades. On December 12, 2007 powerful commanders of General Dostum’s Junbish-e-Milli Islami named Commander Kamal and Haji Payinda Mohammad grabbed about 500 acres of land of the people of Zayee tribe of the Said Abad District, Sar-e-Pul province. The actual owners who were about 500 families were forced to move out of the area. Full news...
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April 2, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Financial Times: International aid and debt relief for Afghanistan has been thrown into doubt by the country's failure to honour an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and warnings that its three-year development masterplan could be rejected. Full news...