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October 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET): Internally displaced households and repatriated Afghan refugees from Pakistan in cereal deficit areas in east, south, and central Afghanistan are expected to be moderately to highly food insecure. There food security condition will worsen as Afghanistan's lean season starts in January. Full news...
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October 29, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has opened its seventh prosthetic and orthotic centre in Afghanistan to help rehabilitate permanently disabled people, but the man leading the programme says more centres are needed. Alberto Cairo, who has led ICRC’s orthopaedic programme in Afghanistan for 20 years, says he has never sat back for a moment at his busy duty station where new amputees seek artificial limbs every day. Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
USA Today: Army Spc. Daus Hempker, 22, sits listlessly on the edge of a hospital bed, still shaken and ashen-faced three days after a buried explosive detonated a few feet away from him during a foot patrol. He looks physically unharmed. But the symptoms Hempker describes — a momentary loss of consciousness when the bomb went off, vomiting, blurred vision, dizziness, sensitivity to light and monster headaches — are evidence of a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury... Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghanistan’s main independent poll watchdog questioned on Thursday an unexplained increase of a million votes from initial turnout estimates after parliamentary elections last month that were marred by fraud and violence. Afghan election officials have hailed the poll a success despite throwing out as invalid almost a quarter of the 5.6 million votes it said had been cast on September 18. Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ANI: About one billion dollars worth of U.S. aid has wound up in the hands of the Taliban and other insurgency groups, war analysts and government auditors say. Sub-contractors have reportedly diverted the funds from programs meant to stabilize Afghanistan. Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: The US government has spent about $55bn on rebuilding in Afghanistan since 2001 but cannot easily show how the money was spent, a government watchdog says. The special inspector general's office for Afghanistan reconstruction talked of a “confusing labyrinth” of spending. Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: A senior Pentagon official broke Defense Department rules and “deliberately misled” senior generals when he set up a network of private contractors to spy in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning last year, according to the results of an internal government investigation. The Pentagon investigation concluded that the official, Michael D. Furlong, set up an “unauthorized” intelligence network to collect information in both countries Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Nation: Several high-ranking officials in the Obama administration are once again trying desperately to minimise the damage done to America by WikiLeaks, a website that released nearly 400,000 classified US military documents on the Iraq war. Without a doubt, everyone believed Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, when he declared that his website had only tried to reveal the truth about USA’s war in Iraq. Full news...
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October 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: The local protest in favor of a prominent warlord is more evidence that the Afghan parliamentary election, trumpeted by the US as proof of a steadily emerging democracy, was marred by fraud and in some cases involved candidates unwilling to take defeat peacefully. While the defeat of a man like Zadran might be seen as evidence that Afghan's are turning away from leaders whose power flows from the barrel of a rifle, preliminary results from the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections instead indicate the old guard of warlords is simply being replaced. Full news...
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October 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Leaks of classified war documents by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks accuse British troops of carrying out attacks on Afghan civilians. The Ministry of Defence today disclosed its version of the incidents after a freedom of information request by the Guardian. Although an incomplete picture, the details provide a rare and compelling account of British errors in the field. Full news...
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October 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday came near the top of a closely watched global list of countries perceived to be the most corrupt, despite efforts to stamp out graft in the war-torn nations. Nearly three-quarters of the 178 countries in Transparency International's annual survey scored on the sleazier end of the scale, which ranges from zero (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (thought to have little corruption). Full news...
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October 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Samaylive: The Taliban have established schools on the outskirts of Pakistan's Karachi city where sermons are delivered to woo youths, said a teenaged would-be suicide bomber arrested Monday.In urban centers, the Taliban recruit from ow-income neighborhoods. Full news...
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October 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghanistan is estimated to be sitting on $3 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits, but poor infrastructure and investor caution are inhibiting development of its mining industry, its mines minister said. "This estimate is based only on 30 percent of the country's area; there is still 70 percent we have no idea about," Afghan Mines Minister Wahidullah Shahrani told Reuters... Full news...
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October 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: n Afghan-owned company bungled the construction of police stations there so badly that the buildings are at risk of collapse, undermining U.S.-led efforts to beef up the country's security forces, a government watchdog says. Full news...
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October 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: NATO says it is investigating allegations of civilian casualties during a coalition airstrike in southern Afghanistan. The alliance said Monday that 15 insurgents were killed overnight in a joint Afghan-NATO operation against a senior Taliban leader in the Baghran district of Helmand province. Full news...
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October 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Raw Story: Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to CNN on Monday that he has received cash payments from Iran after a New York Times report fingered his chief of staff as carrying bags of money back from trips to Iran. Little noticed in his interview, however, is that he said that President George W. Bush knew Afghanistan was getting cash from their western neighbor. Full news...
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October 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghanistan and its Western allies are dangerously underestimating Iran's destabilizing influence on the country, said a former governor of a border province who claims he was ousted for his criticisms of Tehran. Ghulam Dastgir Azaad, who ran western Nimroz for five years, said he frequently investigated and was sometimes an intended target of attacks inside Afghanistan... Full news...
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October 24, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Atlantic: In the year since President Obama announced his troop build-up in Afghanistan, reported events show that the mirror-image issues of governance and corruption have worsened, and that their improvement continues to pose “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” for the United States. Full news...
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October 24, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Postmedia News: The Canadian military has launched an investigation into claims by an Afghan farmer that troops “totally destroyed” as many as 10 mud-walled homes three years ago in a hamlet in the Horn of Panjwaii in order to protect a small firebase. Full news...
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October 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: One evening last August, as President Hamid Karzai wrapped up an official visit to Iran, his personal plane sat on the airport tarmac, waiting for a late-running passenger: Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan. The ambassador, Feda Hussein Maliki, finally appeared, taking a seat next to Umar Daudzai, Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff and his most trusted confidant. Full news...
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October 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Nearly two million hectares of state land has been illegally occupied by powerful individuals over the past three decades, a senior official informed the Wolesi Jirga on Saturday. It was no easy job to retake the land, Muhammad Salim Kunduzi, deputy agriculture and livestock minister, told lawmakers. A department called 'Afghanistan Land Authority' has been established to reclaim the land. Full news...
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October 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghan officials accused NATO-led troops of killing two school boys in central Afghanistan on Saturday after a patrol came under fire by Taliban insurgents, but foreign troops said the circumstances were unclear. Civilian casualties caused by international troops while fighting insurgents are an emotive issue in Afghanistan, causing friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and its Western allies. Full news...
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October 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: While allied governments strove yesterday to downplay the import of the online posting of more than 75,000 classified documents about Nato's war in Afghanistan, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said they "only scratched the surface" and 15,000 more papers were still being reviewed. Full news...
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October 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ANI: Civilians in southern Afghanistan are in greater danger now more than ever, with American-led forces mercilessly pounding Taliban strongholds in the region, especially in Kandahar province. The CBS News quoted American commanders as saying that the insurgents are now fleeing in droves, thanks to the increased use of heavy artillery and air assaults. Full news...
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October 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Rethink Afghanistan: Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column shares a shocking statistic that shows the U.S.’s warped priorities in Afghanistan: if we brought home just 243 troops, we’d save enough money to pay for all higher education everywhere in Afghanistan this year. Full news...
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October 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Deutsche Welle: Now the secret, which never was one, is out. The Wolesi Jirga, Afghanistan’s lower house, will continue to be run by the country’s warlords over the next five years. Former mujahedin leaders and their allies have won in almost all the constituencies. Even in Kabul, a city which at the beginning of the 1990s was almost completely destroyed by the battles between the various mujahedin groupings, the picture is the same. Full news...
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October 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: Since its Revolutionary days, the American military has been no stranger to the use of paid help – from carpenters to ditch diggers – to wage war. By 1965 in Vietnam, the practice of relying on private defense companies became widespread enough within the Pentagon that Business Week dubbed it a “war by contract.” Full news...
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October 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Sweating heavily, his clothes blackened with dirt and grease, Khowajaha Muzamil struggles to raise a hammer above his head with his thin arms. Clearly exhausted, the 13-year-old still has many hours to go before he could rest. Although he attends school in the morning, he comes to work in a mechanic’s workshop after lunch every day and stays there until late at night. Full news...
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October 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: The New York Times just published a story under the headline, "Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region" that could not include more Pentagon talking points if it were written by General David Petraeus himself. In both the broad outline of the story and in the particulars, the Times conveys a deceptive picture of the state of the conflict and obscures the continued deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan. Full news...
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October 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Sky News: It is an extraordinary meeting. There is me on one side of the room and an array of women all piled on top of an Afghan bed on the other. They look at me. I mean really look at me. I am probably one of the few Westerners they have ever seen, maybe the only one. Then the questions come. “Are you married? Do you have any children? Have you any boys? Have you thought of becoming a Muslim? Why do you leave your children? How old are you?” Full news...