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April 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of angry residents took to the streets against the killing of five civilians in a predawn US-led coalition operation in the central province of Logar on Friday. But the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) called the dead militants, who were shot dead in a fierce gunbattle with the combined force. Also, two US service members died of wounds suffered in the firefight. Full news...
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April 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
OpedNews.com: As all wars are not morally objectionable, not all wars are permissible. However, even in the situation where use of force becomes permissible, there are certain essential and universally accepted principles that need to be abided... Judging from the above principles, the eight-year-old US war against Afghanistan trampled every accepted norms and standard conduct of war; a war bereft of reason and uncalled for. Full news...
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April 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: As with so many of the Helmand towns where the British are present the bazaar in Sangin is officially "thriving". Indeed, recent visitors have to admit that there are signs of commerce in the long thin strip of shops. But the rest, says David Gill, a photographer who visited Sangin three times last year, is like "a ghost town in Death Valley where you drive through and all you see is a sign flapping in the wind". Full news...
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April 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Asia Times: On his first day in office, President Barack Obama promised that he would close the George W Bush-era prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "as soon as practicable" and "no later than one year from the date of this order". The announcement was met with relief, even joy, by those, like me, who had opposed the very existence of Guantanamo on the grounds that it represented a legal black hole where the distinction between guilt and innocence had been obliterated, respect for the rule of law was mocked, and the rights of prisoners were dismissed out of hand. We should have known better. Full news...
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April 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA News: The figures cited by McChrystal suggest a large increase (though very small absolute numbers) of civilians killed by NATO actions, when in fact the level of deaths has remained stable. Secondly, the NATO figures are gross, “fantasy” undercounts, e.g., during the first three months of 2010 they captured at most 39% of the actual deaths. Interestingly, the NATO figures for 2010 and the UNAMA ones for the year 2009 reveal the same magnitude (@ 60%) of undercounting. Full news...
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April 20, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
DPA: Afghan officials said Tuesday that NATO forces shot dead four Afghan school students, but NATO said those killed were Taliban militants and their associates. The incident happened around three kilometres south of Khost city, the capital of the south-eastern province of Khost, on Monday night, Mubarez Mohammad Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor, told the German Press Agency dpa. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Veterans Today Network: As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple “drum beating” for an Israeli attack in Iran to get at the gas supplies needed for her secret pipeline deals, her “shill” in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is simply no longer credible. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Telegraph: Government denials of such abuse are the result of a "head in the sand" attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. They are the latest allegations of British complicity in torture following investigations into MI5 and MI6. Human rights lawyers have assembled details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, electrocution, and whipping with rubber cables. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FOX News: In recent weeks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s anti-western behavior has become well known to even the most casual observers of Afghanistan. First, he stood next to, and appeared to agree with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian President called America and its international allies fighting in Afghanistan “occupiers.” Days later, Karzai told supporters in a closed door meeting he might consider joining the Taliban if his western partners didn’t stop pushing him to clean up government corruption and interfering in Afghan affairs. Full news...
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April 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
In late 2001, after helping kick the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan, two militias allied with the United States raped and plundered their way through your villages. One was the ethnic Uzbek militia of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; the other was made up of ethnic Hazara followers of the warlord Muhammad Mohaqiq. They killed your men, slaughtered and stole your livestock, pillaged your homes, and violated your sisters, mothers, and daughters. Some of them took the time to explain why they had picked you as their victims: Because you are Pashtun, the ethnic group that made up most of the Taliban. Full news...
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April 17, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: With a U.S.-led offensive only weeks away to clear the Taliban from this key southerncity, many residents blame foreign troops and the Afghan government as much as the Taliban for pushing Kandahar toward the brink of chaos - the very thing the military hopes to reverse. The goal of the operation by U.S., NATO and Afghanforces is to shore up a local administration that nominally controls the city and break the grip of warlords and influence peddlers, who are thought to have allowed the Taliban in. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Winnipeg Free Press: The system by which Afghans and their families are compensated if they are injured in an American military attack has increasingly become a source of outrage among Afghans who say they feel a price is being put on their lives. The practice has come under particular criticism since the major U.S. offensive in Helmand province. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Toronto Star: Did Canadian troops use Afghanistan’s notorious security services as “subcontractors for abuse and torture?” That’s what the Commons committee on Afghanistan heard this week from Ahmadshah Malgarai, an Afghan-Canadian who worked as an interpreter in Kandahar. “If the (Canadian) interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to NDS (the National Directorate of Security) for more questions, Afghan style,” Malgarai told the committee Wednesday. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Express Tribune: The US is improvising its policy in Afghanistan based on this review and on Obama’s subsequent policy interventions, including the commitment to increase the force level in Afghanistan by another 60,000 troops during 2010. Despite these changes no major improvement has occurred in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban have become more aggressive and are stronger than before. Full news...
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April 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: In Koshan, along western Afghanistan's border with Iran, Arbab Zarif has just buried his brother. "Look how they hurt us," he says. "Look what is happening to us." Zarif's brother was executed in Iran for allegedly trafficking drugs. He says he had no defense lawyer and that Iranian authorities then added insult to tragedy. Full news...
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April 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: A huge explosion took place in Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan late Thursday, killing at least 11 people and injuring 18 others. Xinhua's reporter saw military helicopters hovering over the bombing site, which is located at the city's business center called Aljadid Market. A police official who insisted on anonymity told Xinhua that it was a suicide car bombing attack. Full news...
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April 14, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP: A gunman lying in wait shot and killed an 18-year-old woman as she left her job at a U.S.-based development company Tuesday, casting a spotlight on a stepped-up campaign of Taliban intimidation against women .... Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power, fear again dominates the lives of many young women and girls in the violent south... Full news...
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April 14, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Quqnoos: Human rights bodies are concerned about the rise of women self-burnings in Paktia province. Daud Afzali, the head of the Human Rights Independent Commission, said during a session in southeast Afghanistan on ways how to reduce violence against women that several factors have boosted the self-burnings. Full news...
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April 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Globe and Mail: U.S. troops fired on a crowded passenger bus on the outskirts of Kandahar city, killing four civilians and injuring 18 others, stoking anti-American protests that promised to complicate a massive offensive against Taliban insurgents this summer. Although the military command issued an apology, saying it “deeply regrets the tragic loss of life,” Monday’s incident cast fresh doubts on Operation Omid, billed as the pivotal offensive of the war, which will see tens of thousands of NATO troops attempt to seize control of Kandahar. Full news...
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April 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Foreign forces opened fire on a bus in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four civilians and wounding 18 others, a provincial official said. The issue of civilian casualties caused by international forces is an emotive one in Afghanistan and undermines support for their presence in the country. Full news...
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April 8, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An Afghan woman in an attempt to commit suicide has burned herself in the western Herat province, an official said. Domestic violence has led Shabnam, 25, to commit suicide, her relatives said, as she was in a critical health condition at Herat provincial hospital. Shabnam was brought to the hospital "long after the incident", a doctor at the state-run medical facility, Mohammad Arif Jalali, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Thursday. Full news...
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April 8, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A survey showed over one million drug addicts, including women and children, in Afghanistan spent 1.5 million US dollars to buy drugs on a daily basis, an official said on Thursday. The spokesman for the counter-narcotics ministry Zalmay Afzali told a press conference here the survey revealed the number of drug addicts had increased in the country. "An addict uses drug costing one US dollar a day," he added. Full news...
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April 8, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC NEWS: Akbar Agha was sentenced to 16 years after abducting the trio from the Afghan capital in 2004 and threatening to execute them unless Taliban prisoners were released. Disclosure of the pardon came as the White House threatened to withdraw an invitation to Hamid Karzai amid ongoing anger at his accusations foreigners were responsible for last year's widespread electoral fraud. Full news...
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April 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The world is ignoring the daily deaths of more than 850 Afghan children from treatable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia, focusing on fighting the insurgency rather than providing humanitarian relief, Save the Children said on Wednesday. According to the British charity, a child dies in the impoverished, war-torn nation every two minutes - mainly due to poverty, malnutrition and a lack of basic healthcare - and Afghan children have the worst chance in the world of surviving to their fifth birthday. Full news...
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April 5, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today. The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security. Full news...
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April 5, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Up to 200 people have been sentenced to death in Afghanistan over the past 15 months but President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign any execution orders, according to the Supreme Court. “We have sent many execution verdicts to the president but he has not signed any for over a year,” Abdul Rasheed Rashid, a member of the Supreme Court’s High Council, told IRIN. Full news...
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April 5, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Times: US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. Full news...
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April 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CBC News: German troops have admitted they accidentally killed six Afghan soldiers during a gunfight with what they thought were Taliban insurgents, the Afghan army said Saturday. Three Germans died in the incident Friday in northern Kunduz province. German soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier opened fire after coming across two civilian vehicles that refused to stop. Full news...
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March 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: For the shy Afghan girl who sat quietly in a detention center with a pale blue headscarf, teenage rebellion had come at a heavy price: seven years in prison. Engaged to an older man who had offered $5,000 to her father but in love with a boy she spoke to on the phone, the 16-year-old girl was hauled before a court that found her guilty of running away from home, according to an account she provided. Full news...
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March 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Long the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Between 10,000 and 24,000 hectares of cannabis are grown every year in Afghanistan, with major cultivation in 17 out 34 provinces, the U.N. drug agency (UNODC) said in its first report on cannabis production in Afghanistan. Full news...
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