Common Dreams: The proposed new Afghan law requiring (among other things), women to have sex with their husbands on demand and not leave home unescorted, has shocked the West. But for women in Afghanistan whose rights have always been bargaining chips to be given or taken away for political gain, it comes as no surprise. Despite the rhetoric from the Bush Administration in 2001 that “to fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women (Laura Bush),” Bush’s own military strategy set the stage for the new Taliban-like law today. In hiring the fundamentalist warlords of the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban, the US knowingly sacrificed women’s rights for political gain.      Full news...

PAN: A mass grave of civil war era was found in Karta-i-Chahar locality of capital Kabul when a private construction company's workers started digging the base for a new building near the education department's compound, officials said on Sunday.      Full news...

AP: At least 62 people suffocated to death in the back of a truck packed with illegal migrants, and dozens were rescued unconscious after Pakistani police acting on a tip opened the vehicle Saturday near the Afghan border. More than 100 people were packed inside the 40-foot-long (12-meter-long) metal container, Bakhsh said. He said survivors were rushed to the hospital, many of them unconscious.      Full news...

IRIN: Much of the international aid to Afghanistan over the past seven years has been spent to achieve military and political objectives, and the current approach to aid lacks “clarity, coherence and resolve”, a group of international NGOs has said. “We feel a pull on our sleeves pulling us to the military tent,” said Dave Hampson, a representative of Save the Children UK, adding that funds for aid agencies were being tied to military and political conditionality more than ever before.      Full news...

Times Online: Tom Coghlan, reporting for The Times in Kabul, has been leaked the full text of new laws in Afghanistan, under which a woman from the minority Shia community will not be able to leave the house without her husband's permission and cannot refuse him his marital rights. 'The wife is bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires,' the law says. According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the new law legalises the rape of a woman by her husband.      Full news...

UNOHCHR: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday urged the Afghan Government to rescind a new law, reportedly signed by President Karzai earlier this month, saying it would seriously undermine women's rights in Afghanistan and contravene the Afghanistan constitution as well as universal human rights standards.      Full news...

Times online: This grainy footage appears to show a 17-year-old girl being beaten by Islamic radicals in Pakistan’s northwestern region of Swat, where Sharia law was introduced after the government reached a truce with the Taleban in February.A local Taleban commander in the militant stronghold of Matta, 25 miles from the regional capital, Mingora, ordered the girl to be flogged a week ago after accusing her of adultery, according to local reporters.      Full news...

IRIN: Despite a July 2008 joint emergency appeal for US$404 million to help the most vulnerable 550,000 pregnant and lactating women and under-five children in Afghanistan, nutritious food aid - specially fortified food -is yet to reach those in need. Some 24 percent of lactating women are malnourished, over 19 percent of pregnant women have a poor nutritional status (low on minerals, vitamins, food insecure and weak) and about 54 percent of under-five children are stunted, according to a joint survey by UN agencies and the government.      Full news...

The Independent: Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.      Full news...

The Guardian: Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission. The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.      Full news...

PAN: A Husband decapitated his wife and a police officer was detained in a case of embezzling 1.4 million afghanis in northern Jozjan province.Colonel Syed Abbas Sadat, crime branch chief of Jozjan police told Pajhwok Afghan News that Abdul Razaq, 22, killed his 18 years old wife with knife in Khawja Do Koh district on Sunday night.      Full news...

The Washington Post: A former U.N. official who oversaw reconstruction funds in Afghanistan diverted half a million dollars from roads, schools and clinics to fund his luxury lifestyle, according to a confidential internal U.N. investigation. The U.N. Procurement Task Force accused Gary K. Helseth, an American who headed the U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006.      Full news...

Quqnoos: An Afghan emergency hospital records 600 suicide attempts within a year. This is an enormous number of Afghans, mainly women, trying to commit suicide to flee violence in life. Based on the figures given by the Ibn-e Sina Emergency Hospital in Kabul more than 600 incidents of suicide attempts have been referred to this hospital during the past 12 months.      Full news...

New York Times: The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials.      Full news...

AP: The Afghan government had arrested two TV presenters, one for a programme apparently offensive to Muslim clerics and another for interviewing a Taliban spokesman, a media watchdog said Tuesday.Reporters Without Borders said it was "disturbed" by Monday's arrests of Fahim Kohdamani of Emroz television, who is still being held, and Ajmal Alamzai of Ariana TV, who was released just before midnight Monday.      Full news...

AP: A roadside bomb ripped through a van carrying civilians on a road used by foreign troops in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing 10 and wounding six, officials said.In the south, three Australian soldiers were wounded in another blast.The attacks are a reminder of the dangers facing Afghan and foreign forces as thousands of new U.S. troops roll into the country to try to reverse the Taliban gains of the last three years.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of Garoch village in eastern Laghman province, who fled their homes as a result of several US forces air raids, are in dire need of shelters, fuel and drinking water in their makeshiftarrangements near the capital city of Mehtarlam.Garoch village northwest to Mehtarlam is surrounded by mountains range connecting to Sarobi district of Kabul province came under US air-strikes thrice, forcing the residents to flee and take refuge in Mehtarlam city.      Full news...

AFP: Afghan officials said five men killed in a US-led raid Sunday were all civilians, countering a statement from the military that said they were militants from a "terrorist network." The claim was the latest in a string of allegations of civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces who are in Afghanistan to fight against insurgents, including Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.      Full news...

IRIN: The more than 1,000 children deported from Iran to Afghanistan’s western province of Herat in 2008 face poverty and are at risk of abuse, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Most of the deported teenagers were working as economic migrants in the neighbouring oil-rich country where they are considered “illegal intruders” and qualify for forced expulsion. provincial authorities.      Full news...

CNN: The United Nations says that more than $15 billion in aid has been sent to Afghanistan since the U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. But still, the hospital cannot afford to help the hundreds of children who stream in every day, desperate for care and cures. The government does pay for salaries and sometimes for fuel, but there is often a shortage of even basic supplies like syringes.      Full news...

PAN: Suspected militants last night blew up two schools with powerful explosives in Nadir Shahkot district of southeastern Khost province, education officials said Thursday.Provincial education director Mosa Majroh told Pajhwok Afghan News on Thursday that some unidentified miscreants last night entered the schools and detonated powerful explosives inside the schools' buildings, destroying the buildings badly.      Full news...

IWPR: Mirahmad has a very important job to do: he is the mirab, or water regulator, in his native Pushtrod district of Farah province. It is Mirahmad who ensures that the villages under his control receive adequate water for thWhen the state-sponsored National Solidarity Programme, NSP, gave Pushtrod 200,000 afghani (40,000 US dollars) to clean out the Nawbahar canal irrigation canal, he was overjoyedeir fields.      Full news...

IRIN: "We feel disappointed, isolated and oppressed," said Ravil Singh, a Sikh leader in Nangarhar Province, eastern Afghanistan, adding that local people "are good to us". "We have too many problems but we get no help to solve them. A lot of our houses, shops and other properties have been seized by powerful people, commanders and warlords.      Full news...

IRIN: Millions of trees have been lost in Nangarhar and the neighbouring provinces of Kunar and Nooristan and the ecosystem has been severely damaged because of deforestation, in part induced by drought, officials say. "In the past, over 134,000 hectares of land in the 11 districts of Nangarhar Province were forest, but now tree cover is down to less than 15,000 hectares," Nazir said. Large tracts of forest have also been lost to what were initially small fires. These often get out of control as Nangarhar only has two fire engines and very limited fire-fighting resources.      Full news...

RAWA News: A 27 years old Afghan woman committed self-immolation and died in Pushtoon Zarghon district of Herat province in Western Afghanistan on Monday, March 16. Local officials confirmed the incident and say apparently she had committed self-immolation due to domestic violence. They say an investigation has been started.      Full news...

Daily Times: Respect for press freedom has fallen sharply in recent weeks in Afghanistan, a fact-finding mission report by international media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders said on Monday. The Paris-based organisation’s report said, “The murder of Jawed Ahmad, a reporter for various Canadian news media in Kandahar, the newspaper Payman’s closure as a result of pressure from conservatives and the government, and the supreme court’s confirmation of Perwiz Kambakhsh’s 20-year jail sentence are all evidence that press freedom is in serious crisis.”      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan sits on one of the largest mineral deposits in the region, the country's mines minister said, urging foreign firms to invest in oil, gas and iron ore sectors. A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) had shown that the war-torn nation may hold far higher amounts of minerals than previously thought, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel said.      Full news...

IRIN: Life for Jamaluddin’s family was much better when they lived as refugees in Pakistan in the 1990s; things have got worse since they returned to Afghanistan in 2008. Like millions of other Afghans, war and fear of death forced Jamaluddin to flee to Pakistan. Insecurity, land disputes and lack of jobs have stopped tens of thousands of returnees from moving to their original areas and rebuilding their houses. Some households, including Jamaluddin’s, have set up tents and mud huts in different parts of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.      Full news...

IRIN: There are indications that some Taliban groups fervently oppose the use of contraceptives and may start using the issue as a pretext to launch further attacks on health centres, experts say. A pro-Taliban religious leader spoke for almost an hour against the use of contraceptive drugs, calling them “illicit and non-Islamic”. “Birth gaps have positive impacts on a mother’s health and the practice is in compliance with Sharia [Islamic] law so we will continue to recommend it,” Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for MoPH, told IRIN.      Full news...

PAN: Angry with reported innocent killing of five persons of a family by the US forces in a raid in central Logar province last night, protestors besieged the building of Charkh district headquarters on Saturday. More than three hundreds protesting people, chanting anti-American slogans, called for an immediate trial of the killers.      Full news...