The Guardian: Afghan forces and their international allies killed more civilians in the first half of 2019 than the Taliban and other militant groups, UN figures show, extending a trend that began in the first quarter of the year. This year is the first time since civilian casualty records started over a decade ago that pro-government forces have caused more deaths than insurgents, raising serious questions about the western mission there.      Full news...

The Hill: America needs to reckon with the purpose of war and lives lost in Afghanistan. There is no reason that more American service members should lose their lives there. The real strategic mistake is not withdrawing too fast. It is remaining there or withdrawing slowly and painfully because of hubris or a sunk cost fallacy.      Full news...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: wave of attacks across three Afghan provinces, including the capital, Kabul, despite renewed momentum in peace efforts to put an end to the country’s nearly 18-year war. Three blasts in eastern Kabul on July 25 left at least 10 dead, including five women while 41 others were wounded, Ministry of Public Health spokesman Wahidullah Mayar said.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: The Zangoui settlement, where members of the Kochi nomad population live for part of the year, is on the edge of Jalalabad in Afghanistan’s east. It is usually quiet, cut off from the bustle of the commercial and cultural hub. But on one warm day last month, the calm was broken by the sounds of a Ford Ranger speeding down the road.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: At least eight people have been killed after a bomb detonated near university premises in Afghanistan’s capital on Friday, officials said.Wahidullah Mayar, the Health Ministry spokesman, wrote on Twitter that another 33 people were wounded in Friday’s explosion. Reports said the blast took place near Kabul University's southern entrance.      Full news...

Fox News: As U.S. officials continue in Qatar to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban that would bring an end to the stalemate 18-year conflict – miles away in Afghanistan itself – bombings and bloodshed still define daily life On Friday, at least nine people died and more than a dozen injured – according to the BBC – when a child was made to detonate a suicide bomb at a wedding celebration in the eastern province of Nangarhar near the Pakistan border.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: Afghan special forces raided a medical clinic in Wardak province on the night of July 8-9, 2019, and executed four civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. Afghan authorities should promptly and thoroughly investigate the attack and appropriately prosecute those responsible. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces entered the clinic in the Day Mirdad district.      Full news...

Common Dreams: The majority of American veterans and members of the general public agreed in two new surveys that the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the U.S. military campaign in Syria were all “not worth fighting.” The Pew Research Center, for the pair of polls published Wednesday, asked all respondents to consider the costs versus the benefits to the United States in their analysis of whether each conflict was worthwhile.      Full news...

Yogita Limaye: Afghanistan has been rocked by allegations of sexual harassment at the highest levels of government. Officials deny wrongdoing but a BBC investigation has heard from women who describe a culture of abuse. In a house near the foot of the dusty mountains that surround Kabul, I meet a former government employee. She asks to remain anonymous because she fears a backlash. But she wants the world to hear her story.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: On July 1, a Taliban truck bomb apparently aimed at a Ministry of Defense facility in Kabul blew out the windows of a nearby school, injuring many civilians, including dozens of children. The attack is a grim reminder of the war in Afghanistan’s horrific toll on children. Since 2016, children have accounted for roughly 30 percent of the estimated 11,000 civilian casualties every year in the conflict.      Full news...

AT News: KABUL: Police in northern Sar-e-Pul province detained nine people after allegations that they gang-raped a midwife and a nurse in Aab Khorak Village in Ruyi Du Aab district of the province. Provincial police headquarters of Samangan in a statement said the detained individuals are accused of beating, robbing, and gang-rape of the two women.      Full news...

1 TV: Taliban insurgents have executed a 25-year-old pregnant woman in Afghanistan’s northern Sar-i-Pul province after she condemned the group's fight against government forces, the army said Wednesday. Afghan army’s 209 Shaheen Corps in a statement said that after a number of Taliban militants were killed in an operation by security forces, the woman told Taliban members: “You wouldn’t be killed if you didn’t go.”      Full news...

Darpan: A newly published video shows that Taliban lashed women in Nuristan for “singing/dancing”. Taliban’s leaders in Qatar tells U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad that they are no longer “the old Taliban” but the video has raised fresh question over the issue. Keeping in mind the atrocities and subjugating laws that women were subjected to in the Taliban-held regime, the women of Afghanistan are apprehensive of losing the freedoms that have acquired when the US-backed Afghan regime was established.      Full news...

Daily Outlook: Afghanistan is one of the world’s most prolific producers of orphans and widows. The number of widows in Afghanistan is estimated to be from 600,000 to two million (2M), one of the highest in the world. Three decades of war in Afghanistan have created a large crowd of widows. Most of these widows in Afghanistan lost their husbands as a result of war and conflicts.      Full news...

Ariana News: No single female student has been graduated from high schools in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan during the last 18 years. According to the local officials, even there are no schools for girls in some districts of the province. Ataullah Afghan, a member of the Helmand provincial council said that except the provincial capital and Gerishk district, schools are not open for girls in other districts of the province.      Full news...

News.com.au: Australian Federal Police officers are raiding the Sydney headquarters of the ABC over reports published two years ago regarding alleged unlawful killings and misconduct by Special Forces troops in Afghanistan. The public broadcaster’s Ultimo offices and studios, as well as three employees, are the subject of a search over The Afghan Files special investigation in 2017.      Full news...

Xinhua: Armed clashes between Afghan security forces and Taliban militants as well as attacks had claimed numerous lives and injured dozens during Ramadan, the Muslim holy fasting month. In Afghanistan, Ramadan began on May 6 and ended on June 3, during which, Taliban militants and Islamic States (IS) fighters have carried out series of deadly operations in different parts of the country and national capital Kabul.      Full news...

The Diplomat: IClick, an online shopping company, based in Kabul, optimistically followed news on the peace talks between the United States and the Taliban group. The peace talks raised hopes for the end of the violence in Afghanistan — and the growth of iClick and other startups. But criminals, rather than terrorists, are now ruining hopes of business growth.      Full news...

Fair Observer: The question of drugs is one that will determine Afghanistan’s future. While the talks between the United States and the Taliban continue, one key factor contributing to Afghanistan’s instability is not discussed — opium cultivation and drug trafficking. Afghanistan is the top producer of opium in the world, generating more than 90% of the world’s supply.      Full news...

The New York Times: One of the investigators of the American University in Afghanistan summed things up this way: If the United States government had paid to send every Afghan graduate to college in the United States, it would have spent less money than it did on financing a troubled, English-language university for them in the Afghan capital. The university graduated 1,281 Afghan degree students over the past decade, at a cost of 126,000 USD each to American taxpayers, or a total of 162 million USD.      Full news...

The Defense Post: Taliban fighters have stormed several security posts providing protection to Afghanistan’s historic minaret of Jam, cutting access to the UNESCO World Heritage Site and killing 18 security forces, officials said Wednesday, May 29. The attack comes less than a week after the revered 12th-century minaret, located in a remote part of the western province of Ghor, was threatened by surging floodwaters.      Full news...

UN News: The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday that much greater protection for educational facilities was needed across Afghanistan where attacks against schools have increased three-fold in just one year. The call coincides with the third International Conference on Safe Schools, taking place this week in Mallorca, Spain.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Khal Bibi is a 23-year-old widow. Her family has been destroyed by the 18-year war that afflicts Afghanistan. Bibi’s husband and one of her three children were killed in an airstrike during clashes between government forces and the Taliban. She, with her remaining two children, is among the 550,000 internally displaced people who have been forced to flee their villages.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: The respiratory ward of Kabul’s Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, built with Indian aid, is filled with children gasping for breath. Some scream as they’re treated, their cries echoing off the concrete walls. Amid the shrieks, doctors, parents, and patients struggle to heal, soothe, and breathe. The ward follows a seasonal rhythm—in the summers, it’s used to treat gastric issues, but during the winter, doctors treat Afghanistan’s vulnerable population for chronic respiratory illnesses that they attribute to pollution in the air, a mix of heating from homes and pollution from industrial sources.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: In a recent address to Afghanistan’s healthcare providers, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said, “With what we spend on a single day of war, we could build a state-of-the-art hospital.” With that statement, Abdullah - a medical doctor himself - summed up the state of healthcare in the country plagued by limited resources and an ongoing war.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: Air raids in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand and eastern Kunar provinces have killed at least 14 civilians, the UN said on Thursday. Seven children were among those killed in the attacks that took place in Helmand’s Gereshk and Kunar’s Chawki districts on Monday and Wednesday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.      Full news...

VOA: The collapse of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq is doing little to slow down the terror group’s branch in Afghanistan. Newly unclassified intelligence suggests IS-Khorasan, as the group is known, is growing both in numbers and ambition, now boasting as many as 5,000 fighters — nearly five times as many as estimates from last year — while turning its focus to bigger and more spectacular attacks.      Full news...

TRT World: US president’s decision to pardon US soldiers who carried out murders in Afghanistan and Iraq is just one way in which Washington avoids accountability for its actions. Donald Trump is preparing to pardon several US military members this Memorial Day, including a soldier who admitted to murder in Afghanistan in 2010, according to the New York Times.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: Five children were killed when an explosive device attached to a motorbike went off in a market in Afghanistan’s western province, an official said. Another 20 people were wounded in the incident on Saturday, which took place in Herat province's Oba district, according to provincial governor spokesman Jelani Farhad.      Full news...

The Washington Post: U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan killed as many as 18 Afghan police officers late Thursday during heavy ground fighting with Taliban forces near the capital of Helmand province, Afghan officials and provincial leaders said Friday. U.S. military officials here said the airstrikes, in what they described as a “tragic accident,” killed members of the Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters, but they did not say how many from each side died.      Full news...