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October 11, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A major investigation into an influential Afghan governor accused of taking bribes has been shut down and its top prosecutor transferred to a unit that doesn’t handle corruption cases, Afghan and U.S. officials said. The closing of the investigation into the former governor of Kapisa province, Ghulam Qawis Abu Bakr, comes on the heels of a grim, unpublicized assessment by U.S. officials... Full news...
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October 11, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Opium production in Afghanistan, which fuels the Taliban insurgency, is set to rise by nearly two-thirds as prices soar after last year’s harvest was blighted by disease, the United Nations said Tuesday. Ten years after the 2001 US-led invasion to drive the Taliban from power, Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium, funding much of the militia’s insurgency despite an expensive Western eradication programme. Full news...
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October 4, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Warlords are trying to prepare owner documents of the land they have already grabbed in northern Baghlan province, the mayor said on Tuesday. Dozens of acres of land had been grabbed in Pul-i-Khumri by the strongmen, who were forcing municipal officials to give them ownership documents, Sahib Nazar Sangin told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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October 3, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Sydney Morning Herald: The standard of Afghanistan’s security forces is slowly improving but they still stand accused of human rights violations such as rape, murder and torture, according to a new study. The study, by Oxfam, found that although there had been slight improvements in training and education in the past few months, there are still serious doubts... Full news...
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September 16, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PTI: US President Barack Obama has identified 22 countries, including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as major drug transit or illegal drug producing countries. In a presidential determination, Obama designated Bolivia Myanmar and Venezuela as the three countries that have demonstrably failed, during the previous 12 months, to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counter narcotic agreements. Full news...
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September 15, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: The military’s battle against contracting corruption in war zones is coming under scrutiny from lawmakers troubled by a Pentagon decision not to ban an Afghan-owned company from doing business with the U.S. after the firm was accused of operating an illicit protection racket. Full news...
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September 12, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: The Afghanistan Embassy in Norway apparently gave a frank character assessment of the Minister for Counter Narcotics when it posted the following biography: Zarar Ahmad Moqbel was born in 1966 in Parwan central province. He studied at the Habibia High School before doing graduation from the Pedagogy Institute in his native province. Full news...
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September 3, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: KABUL—American officers deployed as mentors in Afghanistan’s main military hospital discovered a shocking secret last year: Injured soldiers were routinely dying of simple infections and even starving to death as some corrupt doctors and nurses demanded bribes for food and the most basic of care. Full news...
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September 2, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Mother Jones: After three years, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting completed its business this week. In its final report to Congress (PDF), it estimates that the federal government has lost between 31 and 60 billion USD to contractor fraud and waste since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started. Full news...
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August 31, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: A local policing venture in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kapisa province is faltering as men leave the force because their wages have been cut. The men are part of the Afghan Local Police, originally village militias that have been brought under a centralised command structure since last year. They remain distinct from the regular Afghan National Police, ANP. Full news...
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August 30, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Khadija sat by the grave of her only son Sayid, crying bitterly as her her husband attempted to comfort her. “A month ago, my son was coming out of school and crossing the road when a police Ranger vehicle hit and killed him, although the traffic light was red and vehicles were supposed to stop,” said the bereaved father, who lives in Herat in western Afghanistan. Full news...
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August 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: The US government has wasted 30bn USD (18bn Pounds) in contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade, according to a bi-partisan spending commission. The commission on wartime contracting blamed an over-reliance on contractors, poor planning and fraud for the waste. It had evidence of lax accountability and inadequate competition, it said. Full news...
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August 26, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Age: The United States government believes Australia’s strongest local partner in Afghanistan, who has received direct payments from Canberra, is involved in the narcotics trade that fuels the insurgency. Until last year, the Australian government paid Matiullah Khan for his armed men to work with Australian special forces. Full news...
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August 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: An Afghan policeman shot dead taxi driver Mohammad Jawid Amiri six month ago, for no apparent reason. According to a Kabul police official, the shooting was an accident, and the offending policeman is now behind bars. That’s news to the family of 27-year-old Amiri. They say the only contact with the policeman they had since the shooting was when his family offered a sheep and three bags each of rice and flour as compensation... Full news...
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August 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Green Left Weekly: On August 19, a Taliban suicide squad attacked the Kabul offices of the British Council, a government-funded institution that “promotes educational and cultural relations” between Britain and other countries. The August 20 Guardian said at least 12 people were killed, including a New Zealand SAS soldier and three “security contractors” working for multinational security outfit G4S. Full news...
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August 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: Abdul Zaher Qadir, a lawmaker representing Nangarhar in the House of Representatives, has been accused of drug trafficking, a spokesman for counternarcotics department said on Saturday. The counternarcotics department has called on Abdul Zaher Qadir, who also leads the coalition to support law, to answer some questions. Full news...
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August 17, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates 360 million USD in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both. Full news...
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August 12, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Postmedia News: Just off embassy row in the centre of Kabul is a neighbourhood called Sherpur. It’s also spelled Sher Poor, but that’s simply an irony. Because, aside from the streets, which in some places rival rutted mountain passes, there’s nothing poor about Sherpur. Behind the stone and concrete walls that frame Sherpur’s neighbourhood blocks are marbled villas and mansions. Full news...
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August 8, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: In his sprawling office in Kandahar’s gubernatorial palace, Tooryali Wesa spends much of his day behind an imposing hand-carved wooden desk. Stately chairs and couches line the wood-paneled walls, topped with the type of high-vaulted ceiling found in a cathedral or classically designed mosque. Full news...
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August 7, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: “I was born into war. I sometimes curse my parents. Why did they have children in war?” asked Faiz, an earnest young man from Kabul working as an interpreter in Helmand. The 28-year-old explained that he never planned to marry or have children until he was sure that they would not have to endure the hardships of conflict. He held out little hope that that would ever happen. Full news...
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August 6, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The global community has failed to create a politically stable and economically viable Afghanistan despite pouring billions of dollars into the South Asian nation during a decade-long war against the Taliban, says the International Crisis Group. The Brussels-based think tank said the United States and its allies still lacked a coherent policy to strengthen Afghanistan... Full news...
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August 1, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Examiner.com: Afghanistan’s capital city has experienced a financial and development boom over the past decade, growing in population from 1.5 to 5 million people while gleaming new malls and apartment complexes have sprung up and dot the landscape. But these bastions of the rich are offset by the sharp contrast of crowded shanty towns and squatter settlements where dwell the other Kabul... Full news...
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July 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. has wasted or misspent 34 billion USD contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a draft report by a bipartisan congressional panel, the most comprehensive effort so far to tally the overall cost of a decade of battlefield contracting in America’s two big wars. Full news...
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July 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Kabul’s international airport has long been seen as a virtual black hole for foreign currency, the perfect venue through which travelers can smuggle out hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid that was intended for development projects. Full news...
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July 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The United States has made headway in building up Afghanistan’s counternarcotics forces, but the war-torn country needs more international help to hold onto those fragile gains, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Top Defense Department, State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration officials told the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control that Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation was down... Full news...
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June 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: The Afghan government lashed out Tuesday at its former central bank president, who fled to Virginia and announced there Monday that he had resigned in fear for his life. Officials here have accused him of involvement in a major bank scandal and said he had nothing to fear but the law. Full news...
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June 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Associated Press: The farmer picking apples in the outskirts of Kabul must pay the Taliban $33 to ship out each truckload of fruit. The governor sends in armed men to chase workers off job sites if the official bribes aren't paid. Poor neighborhoods never get their U.N.-provided wheat, long since sold on the black market. Full news...
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June 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: A new U.N. report on illegal drugs says Afghanistan accounts for the majority of the world’s production of opium, while trends show production in Burma to be on the rise. The report also found that between 12 and 21 million people worldwide use opiates, with three-quarters of them using heroin. The U.N.’s drug czar, Yury Fedotov, said at the report’s launch Thursday... Full news...
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June 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: Far away from the war, in the remote hills of Badakhshan, there is another battle raging. Trundling into the valleys on dusty roads ripped up by large SUVs, an Afghan task force is heading towards their target: an industry so profitable that many fear it's Afghanistan’s only viable option once the West pulls its troops and money out. Full news...
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June 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: Residents and officials warn that the rush to recruit local defence forces around Kandahar following the arrival of last year’s surge of American troops had given rise to poorly-controlled armed gangs. They listed armed robberies, thefts and assaults by the militias, saying the groups had become the main worry of many residents in the province’s rural districts. Full news...
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