RIA Novosti: Hundreds of Afghans in the southern city of Kandahar protested the deaths of two boys, believed to have been killed by a Canadian rocket. Some media sources reported the children were killed when a missile hit a house in the Panjwai village. Five other people were injured. However Canadian media reported that the children may have died when an unexploded bomb detonated as they searched for scrap metal in the Panjwai valley. A local police chief said the deaths may have been caused by a Taliban attack.      Full news...

IRIN: Dozens of people involved in relief work were kidnapped and/or killed in 2008 and large consignments of aid items were pillaged by insurgents and criminal groups, according to the UN. Ahmad Wali (not his real name) works for a local NGO in Logar Province, about 60 km south of Kabul and where four employees of the International Rescue Committee were killed by unidentified armed men in August 2008. Wali spoke to IRIN about the risks he faces.      Full news...

The Mail: President Obama has angered human rights groups by saying terror suspects seized in Afghanistan cannot challenge their detention in US courts. The US Justice Department says 600 ‘enemy combatants’ held at Bagram air base have no constitutional rights. Human rights groups had hoped Mr Obama would take a different stance to George W. Bush’s.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of northeastern Badakhshan province said that two pregnant women and five children were died due to lack of facilities in the provincial hospitals. Abdul Azim, a resident of Raghistan district said that he transferred his wife to Yawan district hospital in three days, but there was also no gynecologist.      Full news...

RAWA News: If Afghan victims of American or NATO forces get mentioned at all in the mainstream press, it is the dead. Those permanently maimed in “precision” air strikes or midnight assaults by U.S. Special Forces hardly ever are worthy of notice. Yet, such attacks result in injured as well as wounded; indeed, the ratio of wounded to civilians killed in the predominant air attacks in Afghanistan during the initial U.S. bombing campaign was about 1.8 to 1. This ratio has likely decreased as the fighting became more lethally focused, but a decreasing ratio raises the specter of war crimes having been committed against civilians.      Full news...

Focus Information Agency: The document, prepared by the Pentagon on behalf of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan and seen by The Independent, also reveal how swathes of the country have slipped out of the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government. According to a poll taken towards the end of last year, a third of the population stated that the Taliban had more influence in their locality. he growing unpopularity of Mr Karzai, along with accusations of corruption against figures associated with his government, has led the new US administration to repeatedly warn the Afghan President he will lose Washington’s support in the coming national elections unless there are drastic changes.      Full news...

IPS: Despite the heavy military presence of the United States and other Western powers, Afghanistan remains the world's largest illicit producer of opium, according to a new study released by experts who monitor the worldwide trade in narcotics on behalf of the United Nations. "Afghanistan is the source of over 90 percent of the illicit opium in the world," Mylven Levitsky, a member of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), told a news conference after releasing the board's latest study on the global trade in illicit drugs.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Tens of thousands of Afghans displaced from their homes by escalating fighting and ongoing food shortages require immediate humanitarian assistance. Around 235,000 people are currently displaced in Afghanistan, according to estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Most are displaced as a result of the fighting between government forces (and allied US and NATO troops) and armed opposition groups including the Taliban, particularly in the South, Southeast and Northwest regions of the country.      Full news...

The Telegraph: Barack Obama has taken the fatal step: he has made himself a war president, like George W Bush before him. Farewell, Prince of Peace. He has been even more injudicious than Dubya in the fight he has picked, choosing Afghanistan, the unwinnable war that will destroy his reputation. Trying to occupy Afghanistan - like invading Russia - is one of those bad career moves that politicians should regard as strictly off-limits if they have any survival instinct.      Full news...

The Telegraph: Almost two-thirds of Afghan police in the British-garrisoned province of Helmand are using illegal drugs, it has been estimated. A British official working in the province claimed in a document released to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act that 60 per cent of police staff in the area regularly took drugs. The unnamed official said drug use among the police was "undermining security sector reform and state-building efforts as well as contributing to corruption".      Full news...

IWPR: US forces in Afghanistan claim to have killed up to 15 militants associated with an infamous warlord in Herat province in an airstrike, but district officials and eyewitnesses say that the dead were a family of Kuchis, or nomads, who were camped out nearby. Ghulam Mahboob Afzalzada, district governor of Gozara, insisted the strike had claimed the lives of Kuchis, a nomadic people who shepherd their animals throughout the country. Eyewitness say six women, five men, and four children in the village of Karez Sultan were killed in the strike. Several hundred animals are also said to have been killed there.      Full news...

AP: The number of Afghan civilians killed in armed conflict surged to a record 2,118 people last year as the Afghan war turned increasingly bloody, the U.N. said in a new report Tuesday. The deaths rose 40 percent last year, and the numbers could grow as the United States plans to shift tens of thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan this year to take on the Taliban and other militants.      Full news...

Daily News: An Afghan diplomat was charged Friday with beating his wife "like a dog" for more than 15 hours in their Queens home, prosecutors said. Mohammed Fagirad, 30, a vice consul at the Afghanistan Consulate, brutalized his wife inside their Flushing home from about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday until nearly midnight, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. During the attack, Fagirad bit, slapped, choked and beat the 22-year-old woman with a belt, pushed her down a flight of stairs and sat on her chest, prosecutors said.      Full news...

Bloomberg: Iran is helping Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, said General David Petraeus, who is in charge of US forces in the Central Asian nation and Iraq. “There is a willingness to provide some degree of assistance to make the life of those who are trying to help the Afghan people difficult,” Petraeus told a conference today in the Qatari capital, Doha. Petraeus gave no details of the Iranian assistance, which he described as taking place at “a small level.”      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan condemned on Friday the killing of civilians in a raid by Australian soldiers in the south of the country which it says was not coordinated with Afghan forces. The Australian Defence Force said five children had been killed in a shootout between Taliban insurgents and Australian Special Forces in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday, where they were "clearing" a number of compounds.      Full news...

PAN: 16 cases of self-immolation have been registered in Badghis province while the total numbers of cases of violence against women were 33 during last 11 months. Aqila, 18, mother of three children who married three years back said: "I was not happy with marriage, my father married me to a 40 year old man on 0.4 million afghanis, my husband was beating me up and my mother in law was insulting me without any reason"      Full news...

BBC News: An assault on three government buildings in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has left at least 27 people, including eight attackers, dead. The interior ministry said overall 35 people were injured. The attacks come in the week the new US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, is expected to visit Kabul.      Full news...

PAN: US forces in southeastern Khost province killed a principal of a middle school and injured his wife and a child, an official said Saturday. He said that the school principal Qabol Khan was traveling along with his wife and a child when came under fire by the US forces. Qabol, his wife and the child sustained bullet injuries, he added. The spokesman said that the troops shifted all the injured to Bagram Air Base for treatment, but Qabol died of his wounds.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): A man poured acid on the face of his wife and she is in a critical condition in the Kunduz Hospital. This act was committed in the Fourth Region of Kunduz City last night by a teacher called Shakir Mohammad against his 26-year old wife, Alia. According to her information, Alia had not gone to Khan Abad with him and stayed in her father’s home. Her husband had entered and the splashed acid on her face the moment he faced her.      Full news...

PAN: Hampered by massive corruption and lack of quality leadership and human capital, the Government of Afghanistan is one of the weakest governments of the world, the Pentagon has said in its latest report to the Congress. "The GIRoA (Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) is one of the weakest governments in the world. It is hampered by pervasive corruption and a lack of sufficient leadership and human capital," said the report prepared by the Department of Defense submitted to the US Congress.      Full news...

CNN: A British army officer has been arrested in Afghanistan for allegedly supplying sensitive civilian casualty figures to a human rights campaigner, a British newspaper reported Wednesday. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that an officer was being returned to Britain for questioning on suspicion of leaking state secrets. The figures are controversial, The Sun reported, because critics question official estimates. The paper added that the U.S. military was angry over the reported leak.      Full news...

IRIN: In Afghanistan, particularly in poor rural communities, child slavery and debt bondage practices are growing, but are often disguised as marriage, labour or family affairs not requiring state intervention. Haleem, aged nine, is a full-time servant for US$60 a month at Abdul Malik Khan's house in Zherok District, Paktika Province, southeastern Afghanistan. His tasks range from cleaning, washing, serving tea and baby-sitting to night patrols and gate-keeping.      Full news...

CBN News: Every day in Afghanistan, women are committing suicide by setting themselves on fire. In a country where women are often oppressed, self immolation has become a common practice to escape family problems. And the cases of self immolation are growing at an alarming rate. "They burn themselves because they see no other option," said Dr. Zakia Fazel, an Afghan human rights advocate.      Full news...

RAWA News: Much official ado has been made in Washington D.C. and in the U.S. corporate press about how the new Administration will be taking far greater care as regards Afghan civilians. Data analyzed below for January 2009 suggests that the deadliness of the Afghan war for civilians under the Obama clock significantly exceeds that registered under the outgoing Bush regime. Boys, women, girls, tribal leaders all have perished at the hands of the foreign occupiers.      Full news...

Wakht News Agency (Translated by RAWA): Authorities of the Human Rights Organization and Gul Afroz’s family, a girl who was raped, demanded severe punishment for the people accused of being involved in the crime; saying the order of the preliminary court of the Sar-e-Pul province is not enough. 13-year old Gul Afroz was gang-raped by two armed men three months back in the Kohistanat District of Sar-e-Pul Province. The accusers are not contented with the sentence of the court.      Full news...

Times Online: On the streets of Kabul any mention of Mr Karzai – who will stand for reelection on August 20 after the poll was put back from May – is now likely to produce a scowl. The President is blamed for a quartet of woes that blight the lives of ordinary people in one of the world’s poorest countries: insecurity, chronic unemployment, crippling food prices and endemic corruption. While two years ago public criticism in Kabul was more broadly aimed, and often included the perceived failure of the international community to deliver money and change, it now appears to be focused sharply on Mr Karzai.      Full news...

SOS Children's Villages: Every day, as they go to school, girls in Afghanistan run a gauntlet of intimidation and harassment by youths carrying knives. From acid attacks, murder, torching of schools and sexual assault, violence against girl students is crushing the dreams of thousands of Afghan girls and women hungry to learn. In spite of the police presence near every school boys manage to tease girls and even kidnap them and sexually abuse them. In the past eight months, 138 students and teachers have died and 172 have been wounded in criminal and terror attacks, according to the Ministry of Education. About 651 schools have closed and another 122 school buildings have been blown up or burned down.      Full news...

The News: Illicit drugs production, an issue of global concern in Afghanistan, has set a new record of peak escalation in the war on terror period as compared to previous Taliban-led rule over the land-locked country. “Almost a twenty times additional land has been brought under drugs cultivation in seven years of US-led forces’ control and Karazi administration in Afghanistan,” said official sources while handing over the latest statistics on the neighbouring country.      Full news...

IWPR: War crimes evidence disappearing in northern Afghanistan as perpetrators reportedly try and clear the bones from mass graves. Human rights activists say the perpetrators of these acts are trying to erase the evidence of their crimes by clearing out the mass graves that still dot the Laili desert. They want the government to act to protect the sites, so that those responsible can eventually be brought to justice. The AIHRC has received videotapes that appear to show armed men digging up bones and other remains from a mass grave in Jowzjan province, in northern Afghanistan.      Full news...

Wikinews: January 15, a United States military strike in the Afghan province of Laghman killed 15 people, according to U.S. officials. The U.S claims only militants were killed, but on Saturday, village elders disputed that claim with the allegation that the casualties were all civilians. However, this version of events was contested when a statement from the Afghani president's office declared that 16 civilians were killed, not 15 militants. That statement also claimed that two women and three children were among the dead.      Full news...