News from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
RAWA News
News from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
RAWA News


 

 

 





 


 


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  • November 5, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Villagers say 37 Afghan civilians killed in US-led air strike on wedding party
    Xinhua: As many as 37 civilians have been killed in an airstrike of U.S.-led troops in southern Afghanistan while attending a wedding party, local Afghan villagers said Wednesday. Haji Roozi Khan, owner of the mentioned house, told Xinhua on the spot that the air bombing and firing meant to retaliate on militants who hit the wedding gathering, killing 10 women, 23 children, and four men, all civilians.      Full news...

  • November 5, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Army admits soaring stress levels among troops in Afghanistan
    Times Online: Nearly 4,000 new mental health cases were reported in the Armed Forces last year, according to Ministry of Defence figures. Women in the Forces also suffered from a higher rate of mental disorder than their male counterparts. Seven hundred servicewomen, some of whom will have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, were assessed last year as having a form of mental health illness. Of the 868 patients treated between October and December, the number of women with mental disorders was the equivalent of 8 per 1,000 compared with 4 per 1,000 men.      Full news...

  • November 2, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan’s dying mothers
    Daily Times: The Taliban — blamed nowadays for just about all of Afghanistan’s ills — have officially been gone for nearly seven years, so why are conditions still so abysmal? While billions of dollars in aid have led to improvements in urban areas, where health facilities have been built and midwives trained, the overall maternal death figures have hardly changed. As one doctor told me: “A competent midwife or nurse would rather be out of work in Kabul than stuck in a remote village.” But most Afghans live in remote villages — those in Badakhshan can be reached only after a day’s bumpy ride on a donkey.      Full news...

  • November 2, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan Will Be Another Vietnam
    Canada Free Press: If you want to know what life was like in the seventh century, Afghanistan is the place to go. It is largely devoid of anything passing for modernity, by which we mean medical facilities, schools, roads, and such. Never mind the telephones and other detritus of modern life, the conversations have not changed in centuries. The only reliable element of Afghanistan’s economy is poppy cultivation for the opium trade which the CIA estimates generates “roughly $4 billion in illicit economic activity.” This is another way of saying that none of this money reaches what passes for a central government except in the form of bribes. It is a major source of funding for the Taliban.      Full news...

  • November 1, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Another Afghan woman falls prey to domestic violence
    PAN: A woman in the district of Ali Shing, eastern Laghman province, committed self immolation and died on Friday night due to domestic violence. The woman, married in an exchange marriage, was mistreated by her in-laws, Muhammad Qader, resident of Shagi area, told Pajhwok Afghan News.      Full news...

  • October 31, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    80% Afghans have mental problems. Dr. Mufti.
    PAN: More than 80% Afghans are faced by mental health problems due to long war and economic depravity, where as child stress has increased by 30%, compared to the past, said Dr. Khalid Mufti, a well known Psychiatrist here on Friday.      Full news...

  • October 31, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Hunger could kill more people in Afghanistan than the Taliban
    AsiaNews: A team of experts from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading British defence think-tank, said that famine is a greater threat to Afghanistan than the Taliban. At least 8.4 million Afghans are facing food shortages as a result of poor harvest, drought and inadequate irrigation. World Food Programme calls for at least 95,000 tonnes in food aid by February.      Full news...

  • October 28, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The Police Take Bribe, Even from the Beggars of the Shrine of Mazar-e-Sharif
    PAN (Translated by RAWA): The beggars of Hazrat Ali (ra)’s shrine in Balkh who earn a little money with a lot of difficulties, have to pay 30 to 40 Afghanis daily to the police of the shrine. The police officers who are not satisfied from the monthly wages they get from the government, say that 5000 Afghanis in a month is too less to fulfill their needs and so they are forced to take bribe from beggars. On average, everyday almost 250 beggars enter the Mazar-e-Sharif Shrine and each earns a little more or less than a 100 Afghanis everyday. The police officers take 30 Afghanis on average from each beggar and this makes 220,000 Afghanis ($4500) per month.      Full news...

  • October 28, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Sexual trauma afflicts 15 percent of U.S. veterans: study
    Reuters: Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma, from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday. Kimerling said in a telephone interview the term "military sexual trauma" covers a range of events from coerced sex to outright rape or threatening and unwelcome sexual advances. "If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault ... it is possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic," she said. The study does not cover active-duty servicemen and women, as VA services are only available to discharged veterans.      Full news...

  • October 28, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    RAWA Stages Protest Against Islamabad Peace Jirga
    RAWA News: To condemn the presence of Afghan criminals in the Mini-Peace Jirga in Islamabad, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) held a sit-in protest on October 28, 2008. RAWA denounced the participation of corrupt people and criminals like Abdullah (head of the delegation), Kabir Ranjbar, Arif Noorzai and Farooq Wardak. RAWA emphasized that such murderers and traitors can’t solve the problem of terrorism in both the countries and in no way can represent the Afghan people. The hands of above-mentioned people are stained with the blood of our innocent people.      Full news...

  • October 28, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghans increasingly pessimistic: survey
    AFP: Afghans are increasingly pessimistic about their country, with security, unemployment and high prices dominating concerns, according to an annual mood survey released Tuesday. Thirty-eight percent of respondents this year said Afghanistan was moving in the right direction, compared with 42 percent in 2007 and 44 percent in 2006.      Full news...

  • October 27, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    1,002 foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001
    AFP: With three deaths Monday, the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 has passed 1,000, including 97 Canadians, according to the icasualties.org website Monday. This includes two coalition troops killed in a suicide bombing in the northern province of Baghlan on Monday. A third international soldier died after a bombing in the west the same day.      Full news...

  • October 25, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Why the war criminals must leave Afghanistan
    Green Left Weekly: While the war in Afghanistan has dropped off the front pages, seven years on, 56% of Australians say the 1000 Australian troops there should be brought home. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s talk about reconstructing the country haven’t fooled many. Most of the rebuilding projects have been handed over to profit-driven private corporations. Most roads and buildings remain in tatters. Average life expectancy is 44 years. Between 53% and 80% of Afghan people live below the official poverty line (depending on which part of the country).      Full news...

  • October 24, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Thousands protest killing of Afghan civilians by Taliban
    Canada.com: Thousands of people took to the streets of eastern Afghanistan Friday to protest against the killing of 27 civilians by Taliban insurgents. Witnesses said the victims, some as young as 15, were ordered off a bus by armed gunmen in the troubled Kandahar province on October 14 as they travelled to Iran in search of work. Organizers said more than 10,000 people attended the rally to protest against what they called an "un-Islamic" act.      Full news...

  • October 23, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Call for international support to Parwiz Kambakhsh
    CISDA: The ridiculous sentence against Parwiz Kambakhsh shows that the justice programme designed and run by the Italian government has completely failed. This failure looks even worse if we consider the huge amount of money spent. In addition, this is also a defeat for Karzai and for Western governments that have dressed some well-known criminals with jacket and tie, named them "democratic" and put them in power.      Full news...

  • October 23, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Despite the Threat of Harsh Punishment, Soldier Says “No” to Deployment in Afghanistan
    AlterNet: “I believe war is the crime of our times,” Blake Ivey, a specialist in the U.S. Army, said over the phone in a slow, deliberate voice. Ivey, currently stationed in Fort Gordon, Ga., is publicly refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. The 21-year-old soldier filed for conscientious objector status in July but was ordered to deploy while his application was being processed. Despite the threat of steep punishment, Ivey remains steadfast in his commitment to nonviolence. “I am against organized war,” he says. “It is flat-out murder.”      Full news...

  • October 21, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Disability deprives children of education
    IRIN: There are at least 200,000 children in Afghanistan living with permanent disability (physical, sensory and/or mental impairment), according to a 2005 survey by Handicap International - a non-governmental organisation supporting people with disability. Three decades of conflict have left the country strewn with landmines and other explosive remnants of war which kill and/or maim about 60 people, mostly children, each month, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported.      Full news...

  • October 21, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Parwez Kambakhsh sentenced to 20 years
    The Independent: A Kabul appeals court has quashed a death sentence imposed on the Afghan student Sayed Pervez Kambaksh for downloading information from the internet on women's rights. The judges ruled however, that the 24-year-old trainee journalist should serve 20 years in jail -- a decision Kambaksh's lawyers insisted was unconstitutional and should be overturned by the country's supreme court.      Full news...

  • October 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Taliban gunmen kill Western aid worker on Kabul street
    Los Angeles Times: Taliban gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed a Western woman aid worker in the Afghan capital today, fueling a sense that insurgents are increasingly encroaching on the country's seat of government. A suicide bomber also killed two Western soldiers and five children in the north of Afghanistan, where violence is relatively rare.      Full news...

  • October 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    David Davis: The regime we are defending is corrupt from top to bottom
    The Independent: It is time to face facts in Afghanistan: the situation is spiralling downwards, and if we do not change our approach, we face disaster. Violence is up in two-thirds of the country, narcotics are the main contributor to the economy, criminality is out of control and the government is weak, corrupt and incompetent. The international coalition is seen as a squabbling bunch of foreigners who have not delivered on their promises. Although the Taliban have nowhere near majority support, their standing is growing rapidly among some ordinary Afghans.      Full news...

  • October 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Taliban attack Afghan buses, kill 25 passengers
    Rueters: Taliban insurgents killed 25 Afghan civilians, including a child, after firing on one bus and seizing control of another in the southern province of Kandahar, a local police chief said on Sunday. Violence in the war-torn country has surged this year with attacks at their highest level in six years, the United Nations' top envoy in Afghanistan said this month. Some 4,000 people have died so far this year, a third of them civilians.      Full news...

  • October 20, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan minister fails to answer corruption allegations
    Quqnoos: The head of the law enforcement commission has called the new attorney-general and the commerce minister before Parliament to answer allegations of corruption. But Commerce Minister Mohammad Amin Farhang, whose ministry is accused of widespread corruption, failed to turn up to Parliament.      Full news...

  • October 19, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Police find body of 'raped and shot' teenage girl
    Quqnoos: Police have found the dead body of a 16-year-old girl, who police say was raped and then shot, in the south-eastern province of Khost (Afghanistan). The head of the province’s anti-crime branch, Gul Dad, said the body was found on Saturday and was handed over to the girl’s parents the next day.      Full news...

  • October 18, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The West Is at a Loss in Afghanistan
    Spiegel: It is one of the last mild summer evenings in Kabul. A group of Western diplomats and military officials is meeting for a private dinner in one of the embassies in Wazir Akbar Khan, an upscale residential neighborhood. Almost all of the 12 envoys and generals represent countries that have troops stationed in southern Afghanistan and the mood is somber. "Nothing is moving forward anymore, and yet we are no longer able to extricate ourselves," one of the ambassadors says over dessert, a light apple pastry. He gives voice to that which many here are already thinking: "We are trapped."      Full news...

  • October 17, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan: 20 Million People Under the Line of Poverty
    BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): Official statistics show that Afghanistan has the highest level of poverty among the South-Asian countries. On the basis of the official statistics, the level of poverty in Afghanistan is thirty to forty percent and around 20 million people are living under the line of poverty in this country. The government of Afghanistan, despite the support of the International Community, has not been able to do something considerable for decreasing poverty.      Full news...

  • October 16, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Nato airstrike blamed for deaths of 18 civilians in Afghanistan
    Times Online: A Nato airstrike in Helmand this afternoon may have killed as many as 18 women and children, according to local officials in the province. Angry local people brought the bodies of at least six women and children, some of them badly disfigured, to the provincial capital Lashkargar and placed the bodies outside the house of the provincial governor, according to witnesses who spoke to The Times in Lashkargar.      Full news...

  • October 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    How Deeply is the U.S. involved in the Afghan Drug Trade?
    The Huffington Post: America's local allies in Afghanistan, the politicians and warlords who overthrew Taliban in 2001, are up to their turbans in the heroin trade. Drug money is the blood that courses through Afghanistan's veins and keeps the economy limping along. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul propped up by US and NATO bayonets has only two sources of income: cash handouts from Washington, and the proceeds of drug dealing.      Full news...

  • October 15, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan Human Rights Commission Accused of Supporting Criminals
    PAN (Translated by RAWA): The Police Chief accused the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) of supporting criminals. Atmar said, “One of the main problems of the police is that the police arrests the dangerous criminals but then the Human Rights supports them; when a police is killed no one asks about him or the reason of his killing.”      Full news...

  • October 13, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Yes, Saddam was brutal, but are we any better?
    The Belfast Telegraph: All kinds of horrors flop on to my Beirut doormat. There's The Independent's mobile phone bill, a slew of blood-soaked local Lebanese newspapers — “Saleh Aridi's blood consolidates (Druze) reconciliation”, was among the goriest of the past few days — and then there are files from the dark memory lane through which all Middle East history has to pass.      Full news...

  • October 13, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Newly-Wed Murdered by Father In-Law with axe
    TrendNews: The six-year-old, Samiullah, a resident of the provincial capital Aibak was raped by 18-year-old Muhammad Ullah on Friday after the teenager lured Samiullah into his garden with offerings of fruit, the head of the province’s criminal branch, Habib-ul-Rahman Saighani, said.      Full news...



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