Washington Post: The Afghan minister of mines accepted a roughly $30 million bribe to award the country's largest development project to a Chinese mining firm, according to a U.S. official who is familiar with military intelligence reports. In the case of the minister of mines, there is a "high degree of certainty," the U.S. official said, that the alleged payment to Mohammad Ibrahim Adel was made in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.      Full news...

PAN: Afghanistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in international aid, achieved another dubious distinction on Tuesday when an influential global watchdog ranked it as the second most corrupt nation of the world. The Berlin-based Transparency International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) Somalia stayed the world's most corrupt country, followed by conflict-torn Afghanistan and Iraq.      Full news...

Democracy Now!: In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Warlords helped drive the Russians from Afghanistan, then shelled Kabul into ruins in a bloody civil war after the Soviets left. Now they are back in positions of power, in part because the U.S. relied on them in 2001 to help oust the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Hamid Karzai later reached out to them to shore up his own power base as America turned its attention to Iraq after the Taliban's rout.      Full news...

FPIF: As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production. The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production.      Full news...

The Independent: Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.      Full news...

TruthDig: The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women.      Full news...

PAN: Senior officials believe that 75 per cent government revenues are wasted due to administrative corruption in the country. Muhammad Yasin Osmani, a senior official of the anti-corruption department, told a news conference here on Wednesday that most of the revenues were being wasted due to administrative corruption.      Full news...

The New York Times: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.      Full news...

Time: But this time, if the New York Times charges are true, the revelations that Wali Karzai is both a major drug trafficker and that he has been protected not just by his brother but by CIA operatives as well, establishes a chain of causality between the efforts of U.S. intelligence to obtain information and influence, and drug monies that pay for a insurgency that has taken 53 American lives this month...      Full news...

RIA Novosti: Afghan regions controlled by the Northern Alliance serve as a bridgehead for drug-trafficking to Russia, a top Russian drug control official said on Friday. "In the fight against the Taliban, the U.S. has used the Northern Alliance forces, which we are supporting even now," Viktor Ivanov, director of the Federal Drugs Control Service, said at a meeting at the General Staff Academy.      Full news...

Bay Area Indymedia: On October 20, 2009 Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to a November 7th run-off presidential election after almost a third of the votes he received in an earlier August 20th vote were deemed to be fraudulent by election investigators with the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission. Karzai did not do this willingly, but under pressure from the U.S. and its allies he had very little choice.But did the U.S. apply this pressure because its leaders have suddenly come to feel that the people of a country should choose its own rulers in fair elections?      Full news...

AFP: Afghan opium is unleashing a "devastating" impact across the world, according to a new UN report, funding the Taliban and other terror groups and killing thousands in consumer countries. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade that is worth some 65 billion dollars (43 billion euros), feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually, the report said.      Full news...

The Nation: Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he needs more American troops to salvage something like winning in Afghanistan and restore the country to "normal life." Influential senators want to increase spending to train more soldiers for the Afghan National Army and Police. The Feminist Majority recently backed off a call for more troops, but it continues to warn against US withdrawal as an abandonment of Afghan women and girls. Nearly everyone assumes troops bring greater security; and whether your touchstone is military victory, national interest or the welfare of women and girls, "security" seems a good thing.      Full news...

IRIN: Ahmad Wali died in a bomb blast in Kandahar city on 25 August and Samim was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul on 15 September. Both men left grieving families with little capacity to cope on their own. “We could not afford to pay the rent so we left our old home and have moved into a small room outside the city,” said Samim’s eldest son, Arif. “My children cannot go to school any more because we cannot afford their education,” said Wali’s widow, Pashtana.      Full news...

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Sometime this week, we may learn who the president of Afghanistan is. Or we may not. Imagine: As President Barack Obama wrestles with whether to send more troops to fight the Afghan Taliban, it's still unclear whether the sitting president, Hamid Karzai, won the majority required to avoid a runoff. A five-man Election Complaints Commission charged with reviewing claims of massive ballot fraud has finished its work, but we're still waiting for its announcement. If the commission waits past this week, it may be too late to hold a second round before severe winter weather sets in.      Full news...

Mirror.co.uk News: Afghan warlords were bribed to prevent attacks on Italy's troops, a Taliban commander alleged yesterday. Mohammed Ishmayel said the two groups agreed not to attack each other after tens of thousands of dollars were paid to Taliban chiefs. Ishmayel said the deal was sealed in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul. France took control of the apparently low-risk area last year, where only one Italian had died in the previous year.      Full news...

ANI: Even as the Pakistan Army is all prepared and waits for a nod from the government to launch an all out offensive in South Waziristan, the Taliban’s stronghold, many inside the Canadian government who deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan issues are suspicious of Islamabad’s efforts. They believe that Pakistan’s Army and intelligence (the Inter Services Intelligence) are far more concerned with countering India, than taking on the real enemy, which poses an existential threat to the country itself.      Full news...

Arab News: The designation “Graveyard of Empires” may be somewhat of an exaggeration when applied to Afghanistan but as long as NATO troops remain the death count rises. There is no accurate record of Afghan civilian casualties from 2001 to date, but, according to a report issued by the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), published last July, the civilian death toll is soaring year upon year.      Full news...

ANI: The amazing success with which the one-eyed Taliban chief Mullah Omar has managed to regroup the banned organization after initial set backs, has raised questions whether the Taliban’s strategy is capable enough of thwarting the US campaign, or whether it was receiving strategic support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).      Full news...

The Associated Press: The head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan acknowledged Sunday that there was "widespread fraud" in the August presidential election but refused to give specifics or lay blame to avoid influencing the ongoing recount. Kai Eide appeared before reporters to respond to allegations by his former deputy, Peter Galbraith, that the Norwegian diplomat had sought to cover up evidence of massive fraud allegedly committed on behalf of President Hamid Karzai during the Aug. 20 balloting.      Full news...

The Des Moines Register: On Saturday, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made a visit to Clive, flanked by a phalanx of U.S.-government supplied secret servicemen. In a lavish private reception, a senator, congressman and former governor welcomed the former military general, who seized power in a 1999 coup and resigned under pressure last year. On Tuesday, with no security forces in tow, a young Afghan woman who goes by the pseudonym Zoya slipped into Des Moines to speak at a public library.      Full news...

UNDP: This year's HDI, which refers to 2007, highlights the very large gaps in well-being and life chances that continue to divide our increasingly interconnected world. The HDI for Afghanistan is 0.352, which gives the country a rank of 181 out of 182 countries. By looking at some of the most fundamental aspects of people’s lives and opportunities the HDI provides a much more complete picture of a country's development than other indicators, such as GDP per capita.      Full news...

AFP: Eight years after the fall of the Taliban ushered in a new era for Afghanistan, the country remains a black hole for foreign aid donors who have seen little development for their money. Western governments have poured 20 billion dollars into Afghanistan since late 2001 but perceptions of waste are compounding hardening public attitudes to the increasing numbers of coalition military deaths. A foreign military officer said that much of the war-torn country was mired "in the Stone Age", with even the capital Kabul lacking basic infrastructure.      Full news...

IRIN: Despite billions of dollars of aid over the past eight years Afghanistan has slipped down the latest UN human development index which ranks it 181 out of 182 countries, with only Niger lower. The UN Development Programme has been ranking countries on the basis of access to health and education, life expectancy and living standards since 1990, but the only other time the country was ranked globally was in 2007 when it was listed as fifth from bottom.      Full news...

RT (RussiaToday.com): Most Afghan women are illiterate, face poverty, have limited access to healthcare, and subjected to continued and widespread violence. As if this is not enough, they are often arbitrarily imprisoned for “moral crimes”. Under the Penal Code of 1976, which is still in force, women can be punished for offences defined as “moral crimes”. These are mainly adultery and running away from home, often both combined.      Full news...

GlobalPost: The Afghan election results are finally in and, to no one's surprise, they have inflamed a crisis of credibility. Afghanistan’s latest effort in democracy was marred by widespread fraud, violence, and intimidation. The U.N.-backed Independent Election Commission awarded President Hamid Karzai 54.6 percent of the vote, putting him over the critical 50 percent necessary to secure victory without a runoff. Experts estimate it will take the U.S. at least 12 to 18 months for signs of progress to show. Now, half of that time will be spent under a cloud of illegitimacy even if Karzai wins reelection.      Full news...

PTI: Parts of ISI are supporting Taliban and protecting their chief Mullah Omar and other militant leaders in Pakistan's Quetta city, where US officials have discussed sending commandos to capture or kill the terrorists, a media report said on Sunday. The US is threatening to launch air strikes against Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan, 'The Sunday Times' reported.      Full news...

The Christian Science Monitor: Gen. Stanley McChrystal reportedly wants 40,000 troops for Afghanistan. But Obama is worried that the government of President Hamid Karzai is too corrupt. Comments by President Obama and his advisers this week suggest that the administration is slowly coming to the conclusion that the Afghan government - and not the Taliban - is perhaps the most serious impediment to progress in Afghanistan.      Full news...

The Australian: One Afghanistan veteran, in his early 20s, is in a private hospital in NSW. He has lost both his legs. The doctors and nurses treating him are sworn to secrecy. Were someone to ring the hospital's reception, asking for him by his real name, he would not exist. As far as the public knows, his terrible injuries never happened. There was no media release from the Defence Department giving even cursory details of this man's suffering.      Full news...