TomDispatch: In the two weeks since, however, that's been on my mind--or rather the lack of interest our world shows in dead civilians from a distant imperial war--and all because of a passage I stumbled upon in a striking article by journalist Anand Gopal. In "Uprooting an Afghan Village" in the June issue of the Progressive magazine, he writes about Garloch, an Afghan village he visited in the eastern province of Laghman. After destructive American raids, Gopal tells us, many of its desperate inhabitants simply packed up and left for exile in Afghan or Pakistani refugee camps.      Full news...

ReliefWeb: A new UN report on women in Afghanistan, issued Wednesday, describes the extensive and increasing level of violence directed at women taking part in public life, as well as the “widespread occurrence” of rape against a backdrop of institutional failure and impunity. The 32-page report, issued jointly by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), notes that “violence, in the public and private spheres, is an everyday occurrence in the lives of a huge proportion of Afghan women.”      Full news...

IRIN: Stagnant water in flood-affected parts of Afghanistan is the perfect breeding ground for malaria-causing mosquitoes, health specialists warn. “We anticipate an increase in malaria cases this year,” Najibullah Safi, director of the National Malaria and Leishmaniasis Control Programme (NMLCP), told IRIN in Kabul.      Full news...

The Nation (Pakistan)/ANN: A Canadian think-tank, CIFP, has produced a thorough report on Afghanistan under Fragile States. It is a worthy effort to define the prevailing pandemonium posted by the neo-cons in the wake of 9/11. After delving deep into doomsday details about the AfPak area based on Millennium Goals etc, the treatise indulges in imagining the worst/best case-scenarios. It underlines the fact that: "Indeed, 98 percent of Afghan civilians are directly affected by the present conflict and Afghanistan has the tenth highest average of the people killed per million per year."      Full news...

Green Left Weekly: For Joya, who is currently touring Australia to promote her political autobiography Raising My Voice, it is a familiar situation. She grew up in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. She returned to Afghanistan in 1998 to engage in the extremely dangerous activity of conducting underground classes for girls. Female education was banned by the misogynist Taliban, then in power. This makes her assessment of Afghanistan today, more than seven years after it was supposedly liberated by the US-led invasion, particularly damning.      Full news...

Boston Globe: When five drug traffickers in military uniforms were caught transporting heroin in a police truck in 2007, it was a victory for a dogged team of Afghan investigators and their US mentors who are waging a Quixotic battle against narcotics, the nation's largest industry. But in April, Afghan president Hamid Karzai pardoned the five men. One was the nephew of a powerful politician managing Karzai's reelection campaign, and the presidential decree ordering their release notes that they had ties to a well-respected family, according to a senior Afghan official.      Full news...

The Age: FRIENDS said he must have a death wish, going to Afghanistan. But online news editor Gregor Salmon was sick of watching disjointed images of the place on CNN. He wanted to find the truth behind the labels: the Taliban, warlords, guns and opium. And he was up for an adventure. With the help of local translators and "fixers", he spent eight months criss-crossing Afghanistan, interviewing hundreds of ordinary Afghans.      Full news...

The New York Times: The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population. Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.      Full news...

IRIN: Thousands of people who lost their houses in January-May flooding in different parts of Afghanistan need help to repair or rebuild their homes, or find new ones, before winter. “Where houses are damaged or completely destroyed, people are in urgent need of shelter,” Asif Khairkhwa, chairman of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) in the northern province of Balkh, told IRIN. “People should have a shelter before the winter.”      Full news...

AFP: An Afghan rights watchdog on Tuesday slammed President Hamid Karzai's choice of two "notorious warlords" for his August re-election bid and accused him of promising ministries to supporters. "Undemocratic forces that have constantly gained power and wealth over the past several years seem to be hijacking the election process to ensure their future interests and legitimise their grip on political and public institutions. These forces which include former and current warlords, militia commanders and human rights abusers have money, power and influence across the country which make them incomparably stronger than the ordinary voters," it said.      Full news...

Guardian.co.uk: Grana is the sole survivor of a coalition bombing in southern Helmand province that took her arm and her leg, and killed nine members of her family. Grana is just 12 years old, she is lucky to be alive. Grana and her family were victims of a coalition bombing. Locals claim over 70 people lost their live along whole of her family.      Full news...

Antiwar.com: In a ruling widely expected given the judge’s previous comments, US District Judge John Bates ruled that Haji Wazir, an Afghan citizen captured by the US in 2002 and held in detention at the Bagram internment facility in Afghanistan, has no legal right to challenge his detention in US courts. In the seven years he’s been held in US custody Wazir, who is reportedly a businessman, has never been charged with any offense, and US officials have declined to even publicly say what he is being charged with.      Full news...

Windsor Star: Afghan women - particularly in the volatile south, where the Taliban was born - rarely appear in public without burkas and often show deference to the opposite sex, lowering gazes to the floor, almost shrinking when a man approaches. Given that some hard-line Islamists believe the Koran decrees women to be subservient to men, improving conditions for women in a war-torn country with one of the world's lowest literacy levels requires more than education. It requires social engineering.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia's poorest countries. Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It's paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.      Full news...

IRIN: Civilian deaths resulting from armed hostilities between insurgents, the US military, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and government forces have increased by 24 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2008, according to a report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. In May alone, 261 non-combatants lost their lives in conflict in Afghanistan, John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the Security Council at a meeting on 26 June.      Full news...

The Wall Street Journal: Today, the good, the bad and the ugly all flourish in Afghanistan—sometimes together, sometimes apart. But it’s not clear who is benefiting most from the drug trade. Is it the Taliban and al Qaeda or members of ­Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government? Statistics vary wildly, but the U.N. estimates that drugs bring in upward of $300 million annually to the Taliban’s coffers. That still leaves billions unaccounted for.      Full news...

Time: While abductions of foreign journalists can end and have ended in tragedy, the risks facing Afghan journalists are even greater. The Taliban and other lawless elements in the country are often motivated by the potential ransoms — sometimes worth several million dollars — they believe foreigners can bring them. Afghan journalists who fall into their hands generally do not offer the same moneymaking possibilities. And so the escape of Ludin, who like some other local journalists acts as a "fixer" for foreign correspondents, was particularly welcome.      Full news...

IWPR: Khadija Ahadi used to be the most active journalism student in town. At press conferences in Herat, she would always be there with her video camera, usually the only woman in the room. Nobody was surprised that she landed a job as the deputy editor-in-chief of Radio Faryad after her studies. But now her successful career has suddenly been stopped – by force. “Some men threatened me because I am a reporter, but initially I kept working and I didn’t tell my family because they would have stopped me,” said Ahadi, 32. “Then one day they threw two grenades in my house. I have not gone to work since.’’      Full news...

IRIN: Family planning services are available in over 90 percent of health facilities across Afghanistan but the number of women using them in rural areas is too low, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH). Hamida Ebadi, director of MoPH’s reproductive health unit, reckoned only 14-15 percent of women in rural and remote regions use family planning services. Most pregnancy-related deaths happen in remote, isolated and insecure areas of the country where people have poor access to quality health services, officials say.      Full news...

Reuters: The big surprise in Tuesday’s revelations of prisoner abuse at Bagram is how long these stories have taken to reach the international media, given the scale of the problem. Bagram Airforce Base is Guantanamo Bay’s lesser known - but more evil - twin. Thousands of prisoners have been “through the system” at Bagram, and around 600 are currently held there. Meanwhile President Obama’s lawyers are fighting to hold them incommunicado; stripped of the right to challenge the reasons for their imprisonment.      Full news...

UNICEF: Child labour is an issue of growing concern in Afghanistan. The ongoing political tensions, insecurity and rising food prices have put the livelihoods of vulnerable families and children increasingly at risk. In Afghanistan, as in many other countries, the child labour problem is rooted in poverty and in socioeconomic inequalities based on gender and disability. Already, 30 percent of Afghan children aged 5 to 14 are engaged in some form of work.      Full news...

Channel 4 News: Nima Elbagir travels to Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, where a programme to eradicate opium production has led to an upsurge of child smugglers. In Tsasubi, village elders told us that forced to abandon poppy farming, and receiving no help in creating alternative livelihoods, they had turned to smuggling.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): An 18-year-old Afghan boy named Nabiullah set himself on fire on his father’s grave and died in hospital in the in Takhar province, in Northern Afghanistan. ... according to information Nabiullah was the youngest one in his family and had lost his father in recent years but his elder brothers stopped him from going to school and forced him to do a job... it is possible that the economic and family problems were causes of the boy’s self-immolation.      Full news...

The Independent: Some still think of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan as a “good” war. They may change their minds after watching the latest Dispatches, Afghanistan’s Dirty War. Last August, US troops went looking for Taliban insurgents in Aziz Abad, a small village 400 miles west of Kabul. After a brief firefight, they called in an air strike, whereupon an AC-130 gunship tore the village apart.      Full news...

IRIN: Over 1,000 families in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, have opted to return to their home areas in the north and northwest of the country because of worsening insecurity and lack of aid at the camp. Mohammad Azam Nawabi, director of the refugees’ department in Kandahar, told IRIN 1,087 families had formally expressed their desire to return.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): A father brutally murdered his daughter and a young boy for having love affairs in Samangan province, Northern Afghanistan. He stabbed them many times with a knife. The girl was named Shakila and was 18 years old and the boy named Ghulam Sakhi was 22. This savage incident took place at 3 in the morning in Haji Umar Village of Aibak city (centre of Samangan).      Full news...

The Washington Times: The "bravest woman in Afghanistan," in the view of her admirers, Ms. Joya has continued her defiant critique of the Afghan government two years after she was suspended from parliament for insulting her mostly male colleagues by likening them to farmyard animals."These warlords are killers, drug smugglers and dirty-minded criminals who are ruining our country, with support from the United States," she told The Washington Times in a recent interview at a safe house in Kabul. "This is a mafia regime that has betrayed its people."      Full news...

Three women were killed and another eleven civilian injured in a clash between NATO and armed Taliban the previous day in Dare Peech of Kunar Province. According to the governor, the Afghan and NATO forces retaliated and a fight took place. Wahidi said that during the clash some of the bullets were fired in a populated area on people’s homes, as a result of which 3 women were killed and 11 others, including 6 children, were injured.      Full news...

PAN: Unknown assailants beheaded a university student in the southern Kandahar province, birthplace of Taliban movement, officials and witnesses said on Friday. Studying in a mosque on university premises, medical faculty student from Kabul Muhammad Mushtaq was stabbed to death just before noon, one of his classmates told PAN.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: Since 2001, the US Air Force has dropped nearly 31 million pounds (14,049 metric tons) of bombs on Afghanistan. The UN estimates that US airstrikes alone accounted for 64 percent of the 828 Afghan civilians killed last year. Those numbers practically scream the need to abandon conventional warfare tactics in Afghanistan and dramatically shift US foreign policy to incorporate a more humanitarian approach. Instead, we're seeing the horrific images from IDP camps: refugees who have lost loved ones; parents so desperate they would rather sell their children than watch them starve; children scarred both physically and psychologically.      Full news...