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August 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: "Kabul is the new Beirut." This frivolous drivel fell from the mouth of a journalist in Afghanistan. She was effervescent with excitement about the prospect of Kabul's expatriate bars being even more hip than those in Beirut. Beirut – where they dance to the beat of the bombs, where alcohol flows freely and women are freer still. Yay! Kabul has finally left the dark ages and now offers expat bars for journalists and diplomats alike, where alcohol serves as the lubricant for self-congratulatory war stories and chest-beating. Full news...
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August 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Afghanistan's Central Bank has taken control of the country's biggest and most politically potent private bank and ordered its chairman to hand over $160 million worth of luxury villas and other real estate purchased in Dubai for well-connected insiders, according to Afghan bankers and officials. The intervention aims to shore up a key pillar of the Afghan economy and also of the battle against the Taliban - both of which have been marred by rampant corruption. Full news...
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August 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Care2: On the eve of Obama's speech on the Iraq transition, the last thing anyone needs is another reason to have misgivings about the situation in Afghanistan - but that's certainly what a piece from this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle provides. Among the Pashtun, Afghanistan's major ethnic group, sexual relationships between grown men and boys as young as nine are common, according to Joel Brinkley, a journalism professor at Stanford. Full news...
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August 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: One of Afghanistan's most senior government prosecutors said yesterday that he was forced into retirement after aggressively promoting corruption investigations against top officials, including one of Hamid Karzai's most trusted aides. Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, a lawyer well-regarded by foreign rule-of-law experts, lost his position as deputy attorney general at a time of growing US impatience with President Karzai... Full news...
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August 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AOL News: Has Afghanistan become just one more troubled foreign land where Americans must hold their noses and support corrupt leaders for the sake of U.S. aims? The New York Times reported today that a top aide to President Hamid Karzai at the center of the country's biggest corruption probe is on the CIA payroll. The revelation is the latest bit of bad news for the Obama administration and its ambitions for Afghanistan. Full news...
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August 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai’s administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials. Some aides function as CIA informants, but others collect stipends under more informal arrangements meant to ensure their accessibility, a U.S. official said. Full news...
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August 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: An Afghan police commander said Friday that NATO warplanes targeting Taliban insurgents killed six children in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan known to be a militant hotbed. The alliance said it was investigating claims that civilians had died following the air strike on Thursday against militants who were attacking a military outpost in the restive province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan. Full news...
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August 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Workers World: The Aug. 9 Time magazine featured a shocking cover photo: a portrait of an Afghan woman named Aisha whose nose had been cut off, allegedly by the Taliban, for resisting abusive in-laws. Time used this picture to build support for U.S. troops as a “last line of defense” that will not “abandon” Afghan women against an advancing Taliban. None of this was true. Full news...
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August 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. Full news...
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August 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: About 40 schoolgirls became ill and were taken to hospital after a suspected gas poisoning in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, another apparent attack by hardline Islamists opposed to female education. The Taliban banned education for girls during their Afghan rule from 1996-2001, but have condemned similar attacks in the past. Full news...
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August 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Seattle Times: In one of the most serious war-crimes cases to emerge from the Afghanistan war, five soldiers from a Stryker infantry brigade based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord are now charged with murder for their alleged roles in killing three Afghan civilians. In two of the incidents, grenades were thrown at the victims and they were shot, according to charging documents. The third victim also was shot. Full news...
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August 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Hundreds of angry Afghans tried to storm a small NATO base in the far northwest Wednesday after a shootout left three Spaniards and an Afghan police trainee dead, officials said. Hundreds of Afghan men then tried to over-run the Spanish-administered base in protest at the killing of the local officer, in an incident that left more than two dozen men injured, police and doctors said. Full news...
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August 24, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Examiner.com: A former American ambassador to Kabul claims that the U.S. forced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rely on corruption for his very political survival, according to the New York Times: Still, some experts said that the previous “tough love” strategy had fostered paranoia inside the presidential palace in Kabul, leading Mr. Karzai to conclude the United States was trying to push him out. Full news...
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August 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Veterans Today: Nearly two weeks ago, some eight Aid Workers were put to death; this has further made the life insecure in Afghanistan where peace and development are most desired. Such wanton killings only further destabilise the country and the region. Today Afghanistan is home to the US and NATO forces who landed here for some hidden agendas but the declared objectives were to bring peace and development to Afghanistan, that’s not only a distant dream but its totally ignored. Full news...
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August 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Dallas Morning News: Three USD100 million air base expansions in southern and northern Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future. Despite growing public unhappiness with the Afghan war – and President Barack Obama’s pledge that he will begin withdrawing troops in July – many of the installations being built in Afghanistan have extended time horizons. Full news...
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August 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: He was a very tall man who wore outsized shoes and blue clothes. Sayed Husain taught history and prayed at the mosque, and for that he was thrown into jail in 1979. It wasn't until recently that Husaini's sister, Masooma, found those shoes among the remains of hundreds of people in a mass grave in northeastern Afghanistan, helping to close a dark chapter for the family. Full news...
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August 20, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Questioning and dissenting voices have been mounting over the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan since the website WikiLeaks disclosed late last month a multitude of secret military records on the nine-year-old warfare. The 77,000 classified documents painted a gloomy picture of the fighting in Afghanistan, with some pointing to cover-ups of deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of the U.S. and allied forces. Full news...
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August 20, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NYDailyNews.com: Nearly six in 10 Americans are against the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan, according to a new poll. The Associated Press-GfK poll finds that only 38% of respondents support President Obama’s decision to expand the war effort, lower than the 46% who said they did in March. Only 19% believe the situation will improve in Afghanistan over the next year, while 29% think it will get worse. And 49% believe the conditions will remain the same. Full news...
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August 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
UKPA: According to a latest research, Afghanistan tops the list of 163 countries which face the risk of food shortages. The ongoing violence and the country’s vulnerability to climate extremes like drought and flood have made food security hit rock-bottom. Afghanistan is at greater risk of suffering disruption to its food supplies than any other country, new research has found. Full news...
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August 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New Statesman: On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Full news...
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August 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Tolo News: Dozens of Afghans rallied Wednesday shouting anti-American slogans for the killing of civilians in NATO operations in eastern Afghanistan. Angry protesters in the eastern Nangarhar province rallied on Wednesday morning for the killing of two civilians and the arrest of three others by foreign forces in the province's Surkhroad district on Tuesday night. Full news...
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August 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: A close adviser to President Hamid Karzai, arrested last month on charges of soliciting a bribe, was also under investigation for allegedly providing luxury vehicles and cash to presidential allies and over telephone contacts with Taliban insurgents, according to Afghan officials familiar with the case. The Afghan officials also said that it had been Karzai himself who intervened to win the quick release of the aide, Mohammad Zia Salehi, even after the arrest had been personally approved by the country’s attorney general. Full news...
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August 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: The 18 women sit cross-legged on metal beds, wearing long, loose dresses and nightgowns, their heads completely covered with shawls. They do not want us to see them. Some of them are holding babies in their laps. They are addicted to heroin and opium, products of Afghanistan's richest and cruelest crop, poppies. Some of their infants are addicted too. Full news...
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August 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Dawn News: A man and woman have been stoned to death in northern Afghanistan after being accused by the Taliban of having an affair, a witness and an official said Monday. The 23-year-old woman and 28-year-old man were killed because “they had an affair,” said Mohammad Ayob, the governor of Imam Sahib district in Kunduz province. Full news...
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August 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Green Left: The cover of the August 9 edition edition of Time magazine featured a shocking picture of Bibi Aisha, a young woman whose nose and ears had been cut off. The photo was accompanied by the headline: “What happens if we leave Afghanistan”. However, what happened to Aisha took place in Afghanistan under Western occupation. Full news...
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August 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Heraldscotland: Three weeks after the attack on America’s Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Tony Blair used his keynote Labour Party Conference speech to lay the groundwork for the forthcoming allied invasion of Afghanistan. Among his targets was the Taliban-controlled Afghan drugs trade which, he said, was not only funding the terrorists’ campaign, it was also the source of 90% of the heroin on British streets. Full news...
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August 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: The rising number of civilian casualties and the leaking of thousands of confidential war papers by whistleblower website Wikileaks have prompted fresh calls to bring alleged war criminals in Afghanistan to book. Immediately after the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a 10 August report on civilian casualties, the UK-based Amnesty International said the Taliban must be prosecuted for war crimes. Full news...
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August 14, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: There is a “fair chance” that a NATO jet inadvertently killed five Afghan civilians during a shootout with Taliban fighters in a village in southern Afghanistan earlier this week, an American official said Saturday. Some details were still unclear, but a local Afghan official and two witnesses said that the civilians were killed Thursday afternoon when a NATO aircraft fired on a house... Full news...
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August 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
e-Ariana - Opinion: Afghanistan Constitution Article 15 states; “The state shall be obligated to adopt necessary measures to protect and improve forests as well as the living environment.” Afghan Government has violated this article. In January of 2009 the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health stated in a press release that 3,000 people may die in Kabul in a one year time due to air pollution. Subsequently, a state of emergency was declared by the government. Full news...
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August 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Worsening insurgent violence in many parts of the country is raising concern about Afghanistan’s ability to hold a fair parliamentary election in little more than a month, a crucial test of President Hamid Karzai’s ability to deliver security and a legitimate government. After last year’s troubled presidential election, both the government and its foreign supporters are under intense pressure to hold a credible vote for Parliament, scheduled for Sept. 18. Full news...