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July 31, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Khaama Press: According to local authorities in western Badghis province of Afghanistan, a Mullah Imam has been arrested by Afghan police in connection to death penalty of a girl in this province. Provincial security chief Sharafuddin Sharfa said the Mullah Imam had issued a Fatwa for death penalty of an Afghan girl, who was later executed over adultery charges. Full news...
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July 31, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera: The Afghan boy was returning from his sister’s house when he saw three men planting something in the ground. As he approached he tripped a wire, and seconds later a land mine blew off his leg. “I blame the Taliban for this,” 16-year-old Khalil, who goes by one name, told Al Jazeera. “The Taliban saw me coming towards the mine, but they did not warn me. They plant a lot of mines in the area. Once they planted a mine in front of our house.” Full news...
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July 30, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
UNICEF: When Farzana was 10 years old, her father, a farmer and labourer in a small village in western Afghanistan, arranged for her to marry a man 40 years her senior. The groom, already married and the father of six children – most of them older than Farzana – paid 9,000 USD to Farzana’s father in return for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Full news...
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July 29, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: There has been an upsurge of violence on the highways in the south and east of the country. Journeys that took only a few hours three years ago can be interminable. There are daily bloody skirmishes, trucks carrying NATO supplies are targeted by magnetic bombs and IEDs, and civilians travelling on work could be stuck for hours because of blockades by security forces. Full news...
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July 27, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A journalist on Saturday accused the governor of central Parwan province, Abdul Basir Salangi, of beating him in front of his friends at a restaurant in Kabul. Nasratullah Iqbal, who works with a private news agency, claimed the incident took place on Friday night when he was visiting his friends at a restaurant, where the governor arrived along with his bodyguards. Full news...
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July 26, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: Nearly 12 years after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan, two-thirds of Americans think that the war was not worth the cost, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Friday. Twenty-eight percent think the war was worth it, and 43 percent say that it has contributed to the country’s long-term security. Full news...
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July 25, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Fifteen-year-old Afghan schoolboy Emran Khan is proud of his detailed knowledge of Pakistani history. Questioned about the number of provinces in Pakistan, he smiles and answers confidently, “Four states – Sind, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan.” Asked when Pakistan became independent, he immediately replies that it was on August 14, 1948. Full news...
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July 24, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AlterNet: Drug users are drawn to bridges. They offer a modicum of privacy and camaraderie to go about the illegal business of staving off opiate withdrawal and tamping down painful feelings. On a recent trip to Kabul, Afghanistan, I stood among dozens of men injecting heroin and inhaling opium vapors huddled under scarves in small groups under the Pul-i-Sokhta bridge – the name means “burned bridge.” Full news...
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July 23, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Police have arrested a 35-year-old man for allegedly molesting his three and a half years old niece in northern Badakhshan province, while another man stabbed his wife to death in northeastern Takhar, officials said on Tuesday. The alleged incest took place in Tashkan district, a remote border town, on Monday, Badakhshan police chief Brig. Gen. Imamuddin Mutmaein confirmed to Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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July 22, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The programmes – modelled on Western favourites such as The Voice and Pop Idol – are hugely popular in a country with a young population and where television ownership has rocketed since the Taliban were ousted from Kabul in 2001. At the same time there is a growing backlash against what many see as foreign values. Full news...
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July 21, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: There is not an ounce of fat on the wiry frame of Abdul Wahid, and no wonder. After he finishes his morning work shift, he walks 10 miles down mountain trails in northern Afghanistan to the first road, where he catches a bus for the last couple miles to the teacher training institute in Salang. He walks back up the mountain another 10 miles to get home, arriving well after dark, just in time to rest up for his day job. Full news...
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July 21, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Only a fraction of Kabul’s streets are paved properly. The vast majority of roads are nothing but potholes and dirt. Yet contractors regularly overshootroad-building budgets. The Independent Media Consortium Productions (IMCP) investigates the money trail. Kabul Municipality has accused the Turkish-owned Copy International, and three Afghan companies, Hewadwal, Latifi and Quyash Niazi, of inflating road-construction costs. Full news...
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July 20, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A girls’ high school has been set afire in northern Kunduz province, an official said on Saturday. Militant torched the school in the Aalchi area on the outskirts of Kunduz City late on Friday night, the deputy police chief said. Full news...
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July 19, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Officials say a wave of bombings in southern Afghanistan has killed 15 people, including six members of the country’s security services. Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, says there were four bombings. All of them took place late on Friday in different locations in Helmand. Full news...
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July 18, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
McClatchy Newspapers: The U.S.-led coalition is failing to clear unexploded munitions from the Afghan bases it’s demolishing as it withdraws its combat forces, leaving a deadly legacy that has killed and maimed a growing number of civilians, United Nations demining officials charge. Full news...
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July 17, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Times: A 3 million USD U.S.-contracted schools project in Afghanistan remains grossly unfinished more than four years after the start of construction because the Army Corps of Engineers did not hold the contractor accountable for the work it has been paid to do, a new report by a U.S. government watchdog says. Full news...
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July 16, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
HRW: Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, should reject a proposed criminal law revision that would effectively deny women legal protection from domestic violence, Human Rights Watch said today. A new draft of the criminal procedure code, seen by Human Rights Watch, is currently being considered by Afghanistan’s parliament. Full news...
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July 15, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Toronto Star: U.S. Marine Maj. Bill Steuber, like most people in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, knew that local Afghan police were keeping young boys as sex slaves. The practice, known as bacha bazi, or “boy play,” was an open secret in Sangin, a town of 14,000 in Helmand. Full news...
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July 14, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Scores of illegal armed groups terrorise locals. On June 26, people fled Nahrin district in Baghlan province after armed militia beat up villagers to force them to pay oshr (a tenth of agricultural produce). A local, quoted by Radio Azadi, said: “We request the government to expel these groups from our area”. Full news...
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July 13, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: A court in Kabul ordered the early release of three people convicted over the torture of a child bride, an official confirmed Saturday, in a move denounced by activists as a blow for women’s rights. Sahar Gul, who was 15 at the time her ordeal, was burned, beaten and had her fingernails pulled out by her husband and in-laws after she refused to become a prostitute in a case that shocked the world. Full news...
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July 12, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NPR: “On a recent trip to Afghanistan, I uncovered a potentially troubling example of waste that requires your immediate attention.” That’s one of the opening lines of a letter the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction sent to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel this week. In it, Special Inspector General John Sopko detailed how a contract worth 34 million USD was used to build a facility U.S. troops will never use. Full news...
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July 11, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: “We aren’t treated as human beings,” Sikh businessman Amrit Singh said as he sat in his small grocery shop in the Kabul neighbourhood of Shor Bazaar. “When we are alive, we are disrespected, insulted and beaten…. And when we take our dead to the crematorium, which is our personal property, they won’t let us burn the bodies, saying it stinks.” “Do we have any rights in this country or not?” the 45-year-old asked. Full news...
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July 10, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Afghanistan National Journalists’ Union (ANJU) on Wednesday strongly condemned the beating of a reporter with a private television channel. Hussain Nazari, a reporter of TV3, was roughed up in the Chaman-i-Hazoori area, where he had gone to cover a National Olympic Committee (NOC) event. Full news...
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July 10, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Under intense pressure from British and US troops, the Taliban have been demoralised and put on the back foot in the Afghan province of Helmand; yet they have proved remarkably resilient, and will try to “retake” the province once foreign forces withdraw, at the end of next year, according to a study published in the influential International Affairs journal. Full news...
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July 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Afghanistan intelligence on Monday announced the arrest of an Afghan who translated for the U.S. Special Forces and was linked to the mysterious deaths of at least nine civilians in an affair that has further strained relations between the U.S. and President Hamid Karzai. The Afghan National Directorate for Security said Zakaria Kandahari was picked up “recently” in the southern city of Kandahar for “various crimes.” Full news...
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July 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: People of the Dasht-i-Archi district of northern Kunduz province on Tuesday staged a protest against an Afghan Local Police (ALP) member who killed two farmers after they refused to give him Ushr. The incident took place on Monday evening when ALP official Iftikhar asked the growers for alms, but they declined giving him wheat. The policeman shot dead the famers and injured a 12 years old boy in Bajauri village. Full news...
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July 8, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Police recovered a girl’s body with signs of being hanged in the Nahrin district of northern Baghlan province, officials said on Monday. The 17 years old girl’s corpse was found in Sheikh Jalal area by residents in the afternoon, Abdul Fatah Hatef, the district chief, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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July 7, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Stars and Stripes: A new and dreaded word has crept into the local lingo of this bustling town in the shadow of one of NATO’s main logistical hubs: “layoff.” It was inevitable that thousands of civilian employees would be made redundant as NATO’s military operation in Afghanistan winds down after nearly 12 years of war. Full news...
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July 6, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three militants were killed and nearly 300 families displaced as a result of an operation by security personnel in the Baghlan-i-Markazi district of northern Baghlan province, officials said on Saturday. The ongoing offensive -- codenamed Operation Eagle -- was launched three days ago by Afghan National Army and police personnel in Zikarkhel and Himmatkhel areas of Baghlan-i-Markazi district. Full news...
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July 5, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: At least 16 Afghans were killed and 17 others sustained injuries as two suicide attacks rocked the southern provinces of Kandahar and Uruzgan on Friday, officials asserted. In the latest deadly suicide bombing which hit Uruzgan’s provincial capital Trinkot 370 km south of Kabul, 12 people mostly policemen were killed and five others sustained injuries, spokesman for provincial administration, Abdullah Humat said. Full news...