-
July 31, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: Civilians are bearing the brunt of the international forces’ onslaught against the Taliban as the coalition rushes to pacify Afghanistan before pulling out its troops, it was claimed last night. Human rights groups warned that civilians are paying an increasingly high price for “reckless” coalition attacks, particularly aerial ones. Full news...
-
July 30, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Sydney Morning Herald: LOOMING over the dusty, noisy metalworkers’ lane in Kabul is a gleaming skyscraper. Daily, the building’s shadow sweeps over the wooden workshops. And then it is gone. It is a fitting metaphor for this city’s two-speed economy. “We work 100 metres from these buildings,” metalworker Kazem says, “and less than a kilometre from the presidential palace - but we have no electricity.” Full news...
-
July 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Ali Ahmad, 19, and Samira, 18, were walking down a street in Herat in western Afghanistan when a police car suddenly drew up in front of them and officers got out to question them about the nature of their relationship. The young couple explained that they were engaged and due to marry soon, and had come out together – with the permission of both their families – to discuss their future together. Full news...
-
July 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Roadside mines have killed 23 civilians in southern Afghanistan, with a minibus and a tractor struck separately by explosives in Helmand province, according to officials. The minibus was travelling from Nahr-e-Saraj district to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, when it hit a mine and all 19 people inside were killed, said Kamaluddin Shirzai, deputy police chief for Helmand. Full news...
-
July 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Zee News: The cost of British military operations in Afghanistan was on Thursday officially estimated at over GBP 18 billion (around USD 29 billion), The Guardian reported. The figures released by the House of Commons defence committee also show the cost of imposing a UN-backed no-fly zone in Libya as well as the cost of bombing targets at GBP 260 million (around USD 424 million). Full news...
-
July 28, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Afghan education officials have promised to take action after members of the small Hindu and Sikh communities said their children were being forced to drop out of state schools because of bullying. Opinion is divided, however, on whether separate minority schools are the best way forward. “When our children go to the government schools, they face problems,” Ravinder Singh, a Sikh community leader in the capital Kabul, said. Full news...
-
July 28, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: French soldiers serving with Nato forces in Afghanistan have shot dead three civilians, officials say. The victims - a man, a pregnant woman and a child - were travelling in a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint in northern Kapisa province. The French ambassador has apologised, but President Karzai said no apology could bring back the dead and he called on Nato to protect civilians. Full news...
-
July 27, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ABC News: A chronic shortage of midwives and basic health services makes having a baby one of the most dangerous things an Afghan woman can do. A woman dies during childbirth every 29 minutes in Afghanistan, which is wracked by poverty, insecurity and deeply ingrained discrimination against women. Full news...
-
July 26, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Across Afghanistan there are about 850 children in juvenile rehabilitation centers who lack access to adequate food, health and education, and there is inadequate coordination among aid groups trying to help, a senior official said on Tuesday. Mohammad Seddi Seddiqi, head of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Center department at the Ministry of Justice... Full news...
-
July 26, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three civilians, including two students, were killed and six others wounded late on Monday in a clash between foreign troops and Taliban in eastern Kunar province, officials said on Tuesday. Governor Syed Fazlullah Wahidi told Pajhwok Afghan News that Taliban attacked an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base in the Watapur district. Full news...
-
July 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: This month, as the Pentagon and the CIA countenance a changing of the guard – welcoming Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus, respectively – it is worth pressing pause on national security strategy before our modus operandi becomes any more politically disconcerting, morally disheartening and financially devastating. Full news...
-
July 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Five Afghan children were injured in a strike carried out by a British Apache attack helicopter, the Ministry of Defence has said. They were working in a field in the Nahr-e-Saraj area of Helmand Province on Saturday as UK forces targeted an insurgent riding a motorcycle nearby. Full news...
-
July 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Associated Press: Insurgents in southern Afghanistan hanged an 8-year-old boy six days after they abducted him, the Afghan government said Sunday. The boy’s captors had demanded that his father, a police officer, supply them with a police vehicle and he refused, said a statement from President Hamid Karzai’s office. The militants hanged the boy Friday in Helmand province's Gereshk district. Full news...
-
July 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. has wasted or misspent 34 billion USD contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a draft report by a bipartisan congressional panel, the most comprehensive effort so far to tally the overall cost of a decade of battlefield contracting in America’s two big wars. Full news...
-
July 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Graan Afghanistan (Translated by RAWA): The hard political, military and social conditions that Afghanistan is facing today, has affected the whole society and children have turned to one of the biggest victims of this turmoil. Last week, a roadside bomb killed at least ten children and before this Afghan children have been mistakenly targeted in NATO airstrikes. Full news...
-
July 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: NATO-led troops killed a lady doctor along with two family members in the Syedabad district of central Wardak province, the Ghazni Civil Hospital director alleged on Saturday. Dr. Ismayeel Ibrahimzai told Pajhwok Afghan News that Dr. Aqila Hekmat, in charge of the maternity ward, her 18-year-old son and nephew were killed late on Friday, when ISAF soldiers fired at their vehicle. Full news...
-
July 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Kabul’s international airport has long been seen as a virtual black hole for foreign currency, the perfect venue through which travelers can smuggle out hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid that was intended for development projects. Full news...
-
July 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The United States has made headway in building up Afghanistan’s counternarcotics forces, but the war-torn country needs more international help to hold onto those fragile gains, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Top Defense Department, State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration officials told the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control that Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation was down... Full news...
-
July 14, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Associated Press: Government officials in eastern Afghanistan accused NATO troops on Thursday of killing six civilians in an overnight raid, and more than 1,000 people poured into the streets in anger. The military alliance said the joint patrol with Afghan forces in Khost province killed six fighters from a militant group allied with the Taliban known as the Haqqani network and injured one civilian. Full news...
-
July 14, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Associated Press: The U.N. says the number of Afghan civilians killed in bombings and other attacks is up 15 percent from the same period last year. The figures reflect concern that Afghan civilians are increasingly being caught up in violence in the conflict-ridden country. Full news...
-
July 12, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Authorities are striving to improve health conditions for women in Afghanistan, where maternal mortality and female life expectancy indicators are the worst in the world, says a new report. According to the State of the World’s Mothers 2011 report, published on 24 June by NGO Save the Children, about 50 women die in childbirth each day in Afghanistan. Full news...
-
July 11, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of people, including women, attended a Monday rally in Jalalabad to protest cross-border attacks from Pakistan. Nearly 500 people took to the streets chanting anti-Pakistan slogans to protest the shelling that has killed scores of people and displaced hundreds of others in the eastern provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar and Khost. Full news...
-
July 7, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A NATO airstrike killed at least 13 civilians, mostly women and children, in the Doa Manda district of southeastern Khost province, an official said on Thursday. The early morning airstrike on Wednesday was carried out in Kamalkhel village of Syedkhel area at around 4am, the district police chief, Lf. Hameedullah, told Pajhwok Afghan News. He said all the dead were civilians and belonged to the same family. Full news...
-
July 7, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: ISAF has launched a joint investigation with the Afghan Interior and Defence Ministries into reports of civilian casualties resulting from a coalition airstrike in Ghazni province Tuesday night, according to a statement delivered to Pajhwok Afghan News Thursday. Full news...
-
July 6, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Only 48 percent of Afghanistan’s population have access to safe drinking water and only 37 percent use improved sanitation facilities - with serious health implications, especially for children, according to the UN Children’s Fund. Full news...
-
July 5, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of people took to the streets here on Tuesday to condemn cross- border attacks into eastern Kunar province from Pakistan. Pakistani forces have been firing rockets, missiles and artillery shells into villages in Kunar. So far a number of people have been killed and wounded and hundreds more displaced by the shelling. Full news...
-
July 4, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: At least 25 people were injured Sunday when a man on a motorbike hurled a grenade at a high school in northern Afghanistan, an official said. The blast injured at least 17 students at the school -- three of them seriously -- said Ahmad Jawed Bedar, a spokesman for the governor of Faryab province. Full news...