News from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
RAWA News
News from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
RAWA News


 

 

 





 


 


Help RAWA: Order from our wish list on Amazon.com

RAWA Channel on Youtube

Follow RAWA on Twitter

Join RAWA on Facebook


  • December 30, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Two Gang-Rape Victims in Afghanistan Cry for Justice
    Tolo TV (Translated by RAWA): Rape victims demand severe punishments for the people involved in the crime. Two girls, thirteen and twelve years old, were gang-raped by powerful men and regional commanders in Sar-e-Pul about four months back. They say that till now no measures have been taken against the people who had raped them. They demanded justice from the government and legal and judicial bodies. Increasing cases of rape, especially those of children, have greatly worried people in the country. Human rights organizations have also expressed concern over the terrible aftermath of the rapes.      Full news...

  • December 30, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Corruption destroying Afghanistan’s ‘democracy’
    Galesburg.com: Chayes, who organized a co-op of Afghan men and women making skin care products from herbs and botanicals as an alternative to the opium poppy trade, wrote, “I hear from Westerners that corruption is intrinsic to Afghan culture, that we should not hold Afghans up to our standards. I hear that Afghanistan is a tribal place, that it has never been, and can’t be, governed. But that’s not what I hear from Afghans.” What they see instead, she said, is a restoration to power under President Hamid Karzai of the gunslinging, crooked warlords who were repudiated when the Taliban first started taking over vast parts of the country a few years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. The “appalling behavior” of officials in the current government, including rampant bribery, extortion and violence, is a serious factor in the Taliban resurgence.      Full news...

  • December 29, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Fourteen children among 22 killed in Afghan attacks
    AFP: Fourteen children were among 20 Afghans killed in new extremist attacks in insurgency-hit Afghanistan that also left two Canadian soldiers dead, security officials said Sunday. The children and two adults died in a powerful suicide car bombing in the eastern province of Khost, said the NATO-led force, which has troops across the country to fight the insurgents. "In the process he killed 16 Afghans and wounded 58 others," NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.      Full news...

  • December 25, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    UNFPA: About 25% Women in Afghanistan Face Sexual Violence
    PAN (Translated by RAWA): Recent statistics show that about 25% of women in the country are subjected to sexual violence. Younis Payan, deputy of the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA), who was giving a speech on the first day of a one-day workshop (A Happy Family and Intact Society from Islam’s Viewpoint), said the survey had been conducted recently. According to Younis Payan, the statistics show that about 30.7% women suffer physical violence and another 30% suffer from psychological violence.      Full news...

  • December 24, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AIHRC: Poverty in the rise in Afghanistan
    Quqnoos: Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has expressed concerns over the increasing poverty in the country. According to the latest report by the commission, about ten million people in Afghanistan which make 37% of the population, suffer from severe poverty. Also a large number of people in Afghanistan earn less than Afg.50 in a day.      Full news...

  • December 23, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan Parents Selling Their Sons to Survive
    The Telegraph: The trade in children is spurred by the battered country's economy and the failure of foreign aid to reach beyond the coffers of central government in the capital Kabul. A cameraman working for Channel 4 News, Mehran Bozorgnia, witnessed the sale of an eight-year-old boy, Qassem, to Sadiqa, a wealthy woman from Kabul, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.      Full news...

  • December 19, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Kidnapping and Raping of a 15-Year Old Afghan Girl in Farah
    PAN (Translated by RAWA): The police in Farah province arrested five men-including a policeman -for kidnapping and raping a 15-year old girl and rescued the girl from them. According to him, the soldier of the Provincial Security Commander had kidnapped a 15-year old girl from the Farah city and took her to the home of one of his relatives, and there together with some other men raped her.      Full news...

  • December 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan residents fear kidnapping gangs more than Taliban
    Miami Herald: Kabul's growing crime problem is more than a security issue -- it's a sign of a failing government. If government security forces -- whom many charge with complicity in the crime wave -- can't protect the populace from thugs, how can they protect remote parts of the country from an increasingly armed, financed and organized Taliban, residents say. More U.S. troops around the capital may not be the answer.      Full news...

  • December 17, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Coalition forces kill three of an Afghan family in Khost
    PAN: Three of a family, including a couple and their son were killed by the firing of Coalition forces in Kandao area near NATO base in Khost City of the eastern Khost province. Tahir Khan Sabri, deputy governor of the province told Pajhwok Afghan News that coalition forces in an operation at the house of the brother of Dr. Bilal has killed his brother, sister-in-law and nephew.      Full news...

  • December 17, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The failure to end corruption threatens Afghanistan’s future
    The Washington Post: Nurallah strode into our workshop in Khandahar shaking with rage. His mood shattered ours. "This is no government," he stormed. "The police are like animals." In the seven years I've lived in this stronghold of the Afghan south - the erstwhile capital of the Taliban and the focus of their renewed assault on the country - most of my conversations with locals about what's going wrong have centered on corruption and abuse of power. "More than roads, more than schools or wells or electricity, we need good governance," said Nurallah during yet another discussion a couple of weeks ago.      Full news...

  • December 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    From the CIA to the ISI to the Lashkar-e-Taiba: Mumbai Terror’s Afghan Roots
    CounterPunch.org: After early speculation that the recent Mumbai attacks were linked to Pakistan, a former U.S. Defense Department official now asserts that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) had a hand in training the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists. Earlier this year Afghan president Hamid Karzai blamed Pakistan for a brazen assassination attempt from which he barely escaped, and U.S. officials contend that the July 7, 2008 bombing of India’s Kabul Embassy, which claimed 41 lives, had also been aided by the ISI.      Full news...

  • December 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan on brink of famine, aid agency warns
    National Post: Foreign aid organizations say food shortages and early snows may leave eight million Afghans -- 30% of the population -- on the brink of starvation this winter. Famine could easily overtake violence as the country's top problem. "The current situation is extremely fragile," said Susannah Nicol, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program(WFP) in Kabul.      Full news...

  • December 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Meet the Taliban Commander Who Likes Girls And Shopping
    The First Post: Qadir, a short plump man constantly on the phone making social arrangements, did not join the Taliban for ideological reasons. He was in Kabul on an infrequent shopping trip, ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid. With deep black hair, beard and eyes, Qadir is Pashtun - the ethnic group from which the Taliban draws most of its support - and he sprawled low in the back of the taxi until we were able to stop and find a private room with draped windows where he propped himself up on a pile of cushions and smoked ferociously while we talked. "To begin with I thought the international forces would bring peace and stability," Qadir said. "Then they started treating Afghans as their enemies. Their Apache helicopters killed civilians working in the fields."      Full news...

  • December 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan reporters keep shoes on for Bush, ordered to call him “His Excellency”
    The Associated Press: A day after an Iraqi reporter hurled a pair of shoes at President George W. Bush, the American leader on Monday again held a news conference before a group of reporters from a country that the U.S. invaded under his watch. Karzai's deputy spokesman, Saimak Herwai, told Afghan reporters that they had to address Bush as "His Excellency," an honorary title not typically used with U.S. presidents.      Full news...

  • December 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghans torn over family size
    San Francisco Chronicle: Today, many Afghan couples are torn between adhering to the tradition of large families and the financial reality of caring for many children. Afghanistan has the highest fertility rate in Asia at more than seven children per woman. About 800,000 people annually are added to the nation's population of 32 million, according to the United Nations Development Fund. The dilemma is particularly significant in rural areas where parents depend on children to tend crops and livestock, but where war and drought have pushed many Afghans into poverty.      Full news...

  • December 14, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Iraqi journalist throws shoes at Bush during press conference in Baghdad
    CNN: A man identified as an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at -- but missed -- President Bush during a news conference Sunday evening in Baghdad, where Bush was making a farewell visit. Bush ducked, and the shoes, flung one at a time, sailed past his head during the news conference with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in his palace in the heavily fortified Green Zone.      Full news...

  • December 12, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Four Civilains Killed in Shooting by U.S. at a Bus Carrying Afghans
    AP: United States soldiers opened fire on a bus carrying civilians Friday in central Afghanistan, killing four passengers after the driver refused to stop, military officials said. At least 10 passengers were wounded, said Halim Fidai, the governor of Wardak Province. The military said the wounded had been evacuated to military hospitals. The shooting occurred about 40 miles south of Kabul, the capital, on the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar.      Full news...

  • December 12, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Kandahar Schools Empty After Acid Attack on Girls
    IWPR: The Mirwais Meena girls’school used to be a bustling place with over 1300 students. But now the halls and grounds are nearly empty, the swings hang motionless on the recreation field. On a late November morning, there were only a dozen or so girls and three female teachers to be seen. The rest, traumatised by a vicious attack on November 12 that left several girls disfigured and two blinded, have chosen to stay at home.      Full news...

  • December 12, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    As possible Afghan war-crimes evidence removed, US silent
    McClatchy Newspapers: Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime. When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers. Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.      Full news...


  • December 10, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The CIA and Drugs
    Capitol Hill Blue: On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury initiated an extended series of articles about the CIA connection to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Though the CIA and influential media like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times went out of their way to belittle the significance of the articles, the basic ingredients of the story were not really new -- the CIA's Contra army, fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua, turning to smuggling cocaine into the U.S., under CIA protection, to raise money for their military and personal use.      Full news...

  • December 10, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    U.S. troops kill six Afghan policemen, civilian
    RIA Novosti: U.S. forces killed six Afghan police officers on Wednesday in a friendly-fire incident in the city of Qalat in southern Afghanistan, a local deputy police chief said. The U.S. military said in a statement that a civilian was also killed in the firefight, and 13 people were injured. The police station building was severely damaged.      Full news...

  • December 9, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Warlords Toughen US Task in Afghanistan
    Time: Like many mothers in Afghanistan, Maghferat Samimi has affixed the photo of a child to her mobile phone. But the two-and-a-half-year-old is not her daughter.... Last year Samimi received a phone call from General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally who was appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as Army Chief of Staff, threatening to have her raped "by 100 men" if she continued investigating a rape case in which he was implicated. Dostum denies ever making such a threat and calls the rape allegation "propaganda." A witness to the phone call, military prosecutor General Habibullah Qasemi, was dismissed from his post soon after, despite carrying a sheaf of glowing recommendation letters penned by U.S. military supervisors.      Full news...

  • December 8, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Taliban in 72 pct of Afghanistan, think-tank says
    Reuters: The Taliban hold a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan, a think-tank said on Monday, but NATO and the Afghan government rejected the report, saying its figures were not credible. The findings by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) come in the wake of a series of critical reports on Western-led military and development efforts to put an end to the seven-year Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.      Full news...

  • December 7, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Peter Prontzos: How many Canadians will die for nothing in Afghanistan?
    Vancouver Free Press: The 101 Canadians who have been killed in Afghanistan believed that they were serving our country, and for that they deserve our respect and gratitude. We must not forget or trivialize their ultimate sacrifice. But there is an awful truth that we tend to avoid, a truth that must be proclaimed if we are to end the killing on all sides of that bloody conflict. The truth is that those 101 brave Canadians died for nothing. Their lives were taken away from them, and from their loving families and friends, for a lie. More accurately, they died for a series of lies.      Full news...

  • December 6, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Ten civilians killed in Helmand air strike
    PAN: Locals in Helmand province claim that ten civilians including women and children were killed in the air strike of coalition forces in the Nad-e-Ali district. Haji Abdul Haq Helmandwal, a local elder said that a house in Shin village was targeted in the attack where six children and two women were killed. He said that six others were injured who were ferried by ISAF plane for treatment in their facility.      Full news...

  • December 4, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Civilians killed in Paktia air and ground operation by the US troops
    PAN: Local people on Thursday informed a tribal elder along with seven family members has been eliminated during an air and ground operation by the US-led coalition troops in the southeastern Paktia province.Haji Muhammadullah, a resident of Sahak area in the lawless Zurmat district told Pajhwok Afghan News that the area people were busy pulling out dead bodies of Sardar's family members from debris as killed in the bombing Wednesday midnight. "Haji Sardar neither had links with Taliban fighters nor with al-Qaeda network" he remarked.      Full news...

  • December 4, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Violence Against Afghan Women has Doubled in Kunduz
    PAN (Translated by RAWA): This year, the rate of violence against women in Kunduz, especially rape of small girls has increased by two times compared to last year. Expressing concern over this situation, Nadira Gyah, head of the Women’s Affairs in Kunduz told PAN that this year 60 cases of violence, including that of rapes, beatings, coerced marriages and running away from homes due to lack of substantial sustenance; were recorded in the administration.      Full news...

  • December 3, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: UN calls for more action to protect children
    IRIN: The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called on all warring parties in Afghanistan to consider children as "zones of peace" to help protect them against the ravages of war. UNICEF says children are among the most vulnerable groups in the conflict; they do not have the capacity to influence the decisions of warring parties and should not be affected by the conflict.      Full news...

  • December 2, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Drought, poverty lead children to abandon school
    IRIN: Drought, poverty and lack of food have adversely affected the life of many children in Chemtal and elsewhere, forcing some to work instead of going to school. Eight-year-old Ahmad Shafi and his younger brother spend many hours a day fetching drinking water for their family in the drought-stricken Chemtal District of Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan. They have been unable to attend school as a result. "We start around eight in the morning and finish by midday," Ahmad told IRIN, adding that their job was "difficult" and "long".      Full news...



1 2 Next >