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December 1, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Afghan Minister of Public Health Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatime warned Tuesday that AIDS transmission among illegal drug users remains the main factor of spreading the disease in the post-Taliban country. "Addiction, especially using heroin through injection, continues to be the main channel of transmission of AIDS in Afghanistan," the minister said in a notice for Tuesday's World AIDS Day. Full news...
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December 1, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
MichaelMoore.com: Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused former President George W. Bush of “intentionally” letting Osama bin Laden escape during the American invasion of Afghanistan. “Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away,” Hinchey said during an interview on MSNBC. Full news...
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December 1, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences. Full news...
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December 1, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Rape in Afghanistan is under-reported, concealed and a human rights problem of "profound proportions", the United Nations said on Monday. Norah Niland, the United Nations' human rights representative in Afghanistan, said field research conducted late last year and early this year found rape affected all parts of Afghanistan, across all communities and social groups. Full news...
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November 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Examiner.com: It is truly astonishing to watch the cataclysmic implosion of the Obama administration. No one had ever been ushered into the White House with such pomp and enthusiasm. No one had spent so many hundreds of millions of dollars to convince people to vote. No one had garnered such global adoration. And no one had assumed the office with less experience. Full news...
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November 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Sri Lanka Guardian: It is now very clear that the US and NATO have achieved nothing of substance in their adventure into Afghanistan and are sinking in the quagmire deeper every day. The US now desperately needs an exit strategy that looks like a win for two reasons: First its reputation as a mighty military power that can’t be beaten, and especially by tribal clansmen. Second if it withdraws empty-handed, how does it explain the rising number of troop deaths and the billions that are still being poured into a narco-state that is corrupt, in the middle of an economic down-turn at home. Full news...
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November 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Police in the northern Samangan province of Afghanistan found bodies of two children, a private television channel reported Monday. "Police found bodies of two children who went missing four days ago in Samangan's provincial capital Aibak," Tolo broadcast in its news bulletin. Both the innocent kids, aged 8 and 12 respectively, had been killed by stoning and stick, police said. Full news...
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November 29, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ww4report.com: Authentic Afghan voices for democracy, secularism and women's rights oppose the US/NATO occupation precisely because the US has connived with fundamentalist war criminals from the day it arrived in Afghanistan. Foremost among these voices is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), who maintained clandestine schools for girls under Taliban rule at the ultimate personal risk. Full news...
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November 29, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Press TV: Unprecedented levels of drug addiction among Afghan women have raised concerns as the lucrative narcotic industry hurtles onwards. The Governor of Helmand Gulab Mangal says women comprise of 30 percent of the 70,000 drug addicts in the southern Afghan province, the website for the British state broadcaster BBC reported in its Farsi edition. The percentage amounts to 13,000-14,000 women, he added. Full news...
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November 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Press TV: Two Afghan teenagers held in a prison in northern Kabul say they have been abused by US forces in Afghanistan, The Washington Post has reported. In an article published on Friday, the newspaper said the Afghan teens had been held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban. Full news...
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November 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al-Jazeera: The last time I stood by the bedside of a woman who’d tried to burn herself to death was in Kandahar one year ago. She was screaming in pain and later died. It was not an experience I wanted to repeat. But this week I found myself in the Burns Unit at a hospital in Herat watching a mother spoon feed her child some rice through lips that were horribly blistered. Full news...
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November 26, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The military's inspector general asked to be relieved of his duties after a newspaper reported the military knew civilians had died even as German ministers were denying the allegation.A Nato inquiry has since said up to 142 people including civilians died in the September 4 bombing of two hijacked fuel tankers in Kunduz province. Full news...
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November 26, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: It seems every Afghan has a story about bribes. .... "If you want to do business in Afghanistan, you must bribe people every step of the way, otherwise your business will collapse. I think it seems almost impossible to root out corruption, because we can't live without it." Full news...
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November 25, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
EricMargolis.com: Truth is war’s first casualty. The Afghan War’s biggest untruth is, `we’ve got to fight terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home.’ Politicians and generals keep using this canard to justify a war they can’t otherwise explain or justify. Many North Americans still buy this lie because they believe the 9/11 attacks came directly from the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida and Taliban movements. Full news...
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November 25, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The FINANCIAL: Human rights activists have noted a large-scale growth in violence toward Afghan women, hundreds of whom are beaten, intimidated or sexually assaulted by men daily. According to the human rights activists' publication, the number of suicides among women has also grown... Over the last week, there were five such incidents. Full news...
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November 24, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries, but three decades of war and an increasingly brutal Islamist insurgency have left it rich in martyrs and the misery their deaths leave behind. In little more than three months, in Kabul alone, devastating suicide attacks have killed around 100 people. About 300 people have been injured. Full news...
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November 23, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Irish Sun: Children in Afghanistan are suffering from serious child abuse and high levels of mortality. United Nations officials, speaking in Kabul, have said children are being deprived in the worst possible ways with their rights being neglected despite vast flow of Western aid into the country. Full news...
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November 22, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: "I was seven-year-old when I got married. I did not have kids till the age of 12. I became a mother of four kids. My husband is a drug user. I asked him to stop using drugs many times, but he wouldn't stop. I warned him that I would have no choice but to kill myself if he didn't quit using drugs. He couldn't do it, and that is why I burned myself." Full news...
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November 22, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Sixty civilians were killed and 102 others wounded in various violence-related incidents over the past one week, the Ministry of Interior has said. Most of the civilian casualties occurred in volatile southern provinces of Ghazni, Helmand and Kandahar as a result of roadside bombs, rocket attacks, ambushes and suicide attacks, the ministry added. Full news...
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November 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Department of Women's Affair in Baghlan province reports a worrisome increase in the scale of violence against women, including murder and suicide, this year as compared to the previous year. With heightened concern, the department says up to 74 cases of violence were recorded since the beginning of this year, against last year's 67 cases. Full news...
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November 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
National Post: In Afghanistan ruling politicians have publicly called Malalai Joya a "prostitute," "infidel," "traitor" and "communist." Some, whom he calls "criminals," "killers," "warlords" and "mafia drug lords," have threatened to rape her and, on four occasions, tried to kill her. But overseas, the tiny 31-year-old political activist and former school teacher has been hailed as "the bravest woman in Afghanistan" and compared to Burma's jailed democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Full news...
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November 20, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Times: “People hate the Americans from the bottom of their hearts,” Haji Akhtar Mohammed Shinwari said as he recalled how the US military had brought death to his homeland. For residents of Shinwar, a village in distant Nangahar province, the message from President Karzai’s address yesterday that the Americans would hand over security over the next five years was disappointing. Full news...
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November 20, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Eight years after a U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, the war-ravaged state is the most dangerous place in the world for a child to be born, the United Nations said on Thursday. It is especially dangerous for girls, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in launching its annual flagship report, The State of the World’s Children. Full news...
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November 19, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
McClatchy: President Hamid Karzai began his second term Thursday ... On one side of the cavernous room sat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's warned that the international community is losing patience with Karzai. On the other side was Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan warlord who's become a symbol of cronyism and government corruption. Full news...
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November 18, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Washington Post: The Afghan minister of mines accepted a roughly $30 million bribe to award the country's largest development project to a Chinese mining firm, according to a U.S. official who is familiar with military intelligence reports. In the case of the minister of mines, there is a "high degree of certainty," the U.S. official said, that the alleged payment to Mohammad Ibrahim Adel was made in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Full news...
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November 18, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Over two million Afghans have been killed or wounded in armed conflicts and violence over the past three decades but the desire for peace and stability has always been strong, nine NGOs say in a report published today. “A whole generation has grown up never having experienced peace and many Afghans are struggling to cope with the psychological, economic, social and physical ramifications of the conflict, past and present,” says the report entitled The Cost of War, Afghan Experiences of Conflict, 1978-2009. Full news...
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November 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TomDispatch.com: Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies -- Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid -- that helped to swell the election coffers of President Hamid Karzai as well as the family business of his running mate, the country's new vice-president, warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim. Full news...
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November 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN (Translated by RAWA): Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry denied all kinds of government intervention in the one-year contract of renting out 31 armored vehicles (each car costing $500 per day) for high-ranked officials of Defense Ministry.... Jangul Karger, the representative of Parwan province in the parliament gave this report to PAN according to which each armored Land Cruiser is rented out for $500 each day. Full news...
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November 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Afghanistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in international aid, achieved another dubious distinction on Tuesday when an influential global watchdog ranked it as the second most corrupt nation of the world. The Berlin-based Transparency International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) Somalia stayed the world's most corrupt country, followed by conflict-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. Full news...
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November 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort. In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. Full news...