The Christian Science Monitor: The US is spending about $10 billion a month on Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of this year, the total funds appropriated will be nearly $600 billion – approaching the amount spent on the Vietnam or Korean wars, when adjusted for inflation.      Full news...

Ms. Magazine: A second drought in Afghanistan has affected over two-and-a-half million villagers, some of whom are selling their young daughters as brides in order to feed and clothe their families.      Full news...

IRIN: Ahmad Wali, 9, is combing the rubbish dump for soda cans to sell as a way to support his 11-member family in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Thousands of children work the streets to help their households through the harsh winter.      Full news...

Paktribune.com: Seeking treatment for her grandmother is an experience Nilab will never forget. The 20-year-old from the central Logar province had brought her grandmother to Kabul for treating a fever in late July. The 70-year-old passed away after she began medication.      Full news...

Associated Press: An Afghan insurgent leader operating from inside Pakistan sent some 200 ill-equipped fighters, some wearing plastic bags on their feet, into Afghanistan where most were killed in a major battle this week, a top U.S. general said Saturday.      Full news...

The Time: They should be the happiest boys in Afghanistan. Zekeria, Ahmad and Ali have been plucked from their home in war-ravaged Kabul to star in "The Kite Runner," the long-awaited Hollywood film of Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel.      Full news...

Reuters: Heroin smuggling through Central Asia is likely to jump this year after a record opium harvest in Afghanistan, the head of Tajikistan's drug control agency and United Nations officials said on Friday. Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world's opiates and about one fifth of the illegal drugs are smuggled to Europe, Russia and the United States via the so-called "northern route" through Central Asia.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Armed men looted a bank vehicle at gunpoint and decamped with millions of cash in the high security zone of this central capital on Thursday.      Full news...

The Canadian Press: Five years after Canada began pumping millions of aid dollars into Afghanistan, taxpayers still have no idea how well the money is being spent.      Full news...

Mehr News Agency: Prosecutor General Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi said here on Wednesday that 60 percent of the illicit drugs produced in Afghanistan are transited through Iran.      Full news...

The Herald (UK): The Taliban, are not the only ones terrorising Gereshk. So are the police. "They are thieves," said Sgt Din through a translator, pointing to the town. "They stop the vehicles at checkpoints and take money. One day we tried to stop them. They cocked their weapons. So did we. The ANA commander told us not to get involved."      Full news...

IDMC: Fierce fighting between NATO troops and insurgents in southern Afghanistan has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing from their homes in a new wave of displacement. Although numbers are unverified, the government said that more than 20,000 families had been displaced due to the fighting in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan as of November 2006.      Full news...

Institute for War and Peace Reporting: "The girl who was exchanged for a dog" has become a sensation around the world, sparking outrage in human rights circles. But the canine connection is a minor part of the story, a curiosity that served as a hook to bring the case to public attention.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: The prevailing cold wave has claimed lives of 11 children and women in the Shibar district of the central Bamyan province last week.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Rivals have accused General Abdul Rashid Dostum for causing insecurity and distributing weapons amongst his followers in Jawzjan and Faryab provinces.      Full news...

The State (South Carolina): More heroin from Afghanistan is hitting American city streets, five years after the U.S. toppled the fundamentalist Taliban regime.      Full news...

The Observer: Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy.      Full news...

AP: NATO acknowledged Wednesday that the number of civilians killed by its forces in Afghanistan last year was too high, but said the Western alliance was working to change that in 2007.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Insecurity and intimidation by gunmen kept some 50,000 school-age children away from continuing their education during the past year in the southern province of Ghazni, officials say.      Full news...

Reuters: Scores of people protested in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday over the killing of two civilians and the arrest of three by U.S.-led troops, officials and witnesses said.      Full news...

Seven Oaks Magazine: In early September, Canadian military personnel stationed in Afghanistan's Kandahar province spearheaded NATO's Operation Medusa, aimed at Taliban strongholds in the Panjwaii and Zhari districts of that province. Accustomed to seeing the Canadian Forces' role as that of peace-keepers, many observers were stunned by reports that the Medusa offensive had resulted in hundreds of enemy combatants killed along with five fatalities suffered by Canadian soldiers. Meanwhile, there was a largely unreported civilian exodus as some 80,000 people fled their homes while "at least 50 civilians were killed over several weeks of bombing" (New York Times, Nov 27, A12).      Full news...

UPI: Iran has poured more than $200 million in aid into Afghanistan as part of a bid to broaden its political and religious influence, The New York Times reported.      Full news...

International Herald Tribune: Afghanistan, a fragile mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, has long been susceptible to intervention from more powerful neighbors. As the world's largest predominantly Shiite country, Iran is the traditional foreign backer of Afghanistan's Shiites, roughly 20 percent of the country's population. During the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, Iranian Revolutionary Guards financed and trained fundamentalist Shiite militias, as well as Sunni fighters. In the civil war after the Russian withdrawal in 1989, Iran was a patron of the Northern Alliance, while Pakistan supported the ultimately victorious Taliban.      Full news...

The Hindustan Times - While the world waiting eagerly to welcome the new year 2007, the people of Afghanistan, the Karzai government and the US and NATO fighters would like to forget their worst year since the ouster of Taliban five years ago. The year 2006 witnessed the killing of over 3900 people, representing a four-fold increase over the 1000 deaths last year.      Full news...

BBC - Five years ago, after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's new government pledged swift action to improve the lives of women. But a recent report by the international women's organisation Womankind Worldwide said millions of Afghan women and girls continue to face discrimination and violence in their day-to-day lives.      Full news...

BBC News: Gulsoom is 17-years-old and married. Last year she tried to commit suicide - she failed. She set fire to herself but, against the odds, survived with appalling injuries. Her plight reflects that of a growing number of young Afghan women, campaigners say.      Full news...

HRW - New York – President Hamid Karzai should immediately enforce a program to provide truth, reconciliation and accountability for war crimes and major human rights abuses over the past 30 years in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. The Afghan government should establish a special court to try those responsible, some of whom hold high office, as soon as possible, Human Rights Watch said.      Full news...

IWPR: Idris, 16, sells cigarettes for a living. Walking along the road in Herat with a wooden box hanging from his neck, he confesses that he had moved onto stronger substances. "I didn't want to become addicted, but I started smoking since I was selling cigarettes," he said.      Full news...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach must be killed.      Full news...

AP - KABUL - Farida's son inherited her drug addiction in the womb, and drank her opium-laced breast milk. And when he cried and fussed, she calmed him with specks of opium diluted in tea.      Full news...