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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NBC News: A crackdown on private security firms in Afghanistan has created a power vacuum in the country’s capital city, with one security contractor saying Afghan forces have become like “kids in a candy store” as they harass and solicit bribes from expatriates and those who protect them. Full news...
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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AOL News: Rampant illiteracy among Afghanistan's army and police recruits is fueling corruption and slowing training, according to a U.S. Army official working with the nascent security forces. “Estimates range, but we think right now when we're recruiting that only 15 percent of the soldiers and policemen that we recruit are literate,” Col. John Ferrari, the deputy commander for program at NATO Training Mission Afghanistan, told reporters in a conference call. Full news...
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December 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: General David Petraeus, in a rare public show of indecorum, last week suggested that corruption has been a part of Afghan culture since the country came into existence, which is a sentiment that is not only, from a historical and anthropological perspective, wholly ignorant, but one that exposes intentions on the General’s part that seem both dubious as well as misplaced. Full news...
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December 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: The most extraordinary failure of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million Afghans live. In a series of interviews, they paint a picture of a country where $52bn (33bn Pounds) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war. Full news...
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December 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons. Full news...
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December 8, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Irish Times: IRAN SECRETLY poured millions of euro into the recent Afghan parliamentary elections to stack the lower house with its favoured candidates, senior government officials and diplomats have alleged. Candidates received slush funds of tens of thousands of euro each to pay campaign expenses or to bribe electoral officials as Tehran sought to install friendly members of parliament it was claimed. Full news...
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December 8, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
City State Times: In another hot issue and hot water, United States based company, DynCorp is engaging in taboo activities that humiliates young Afghan males. According to WikiLeaks and other corroborated reports there was party partially thrown by DynCorp for Afghan police recruits in Kunduz Province. During this party Bacha boys were invited to perform a so called “traditional dance”. Full news...
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December 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera: Saudi Arabia is a key source of funds for armed groups, including al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to a leaked US state department assessment. In a series of diplomatic cables spanning several years, published by the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website on Sunday, the state department details how such groups continue to seek financing in Saudi Arabia, often posing as pilgrims visiting the Muslim holy sites. Full news...
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December 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Taliban were not behind the slicing off of a woman’s nose and ears in central Uruzgan province, chief of the human rights commission said on Monday. The story of how Aisha Bibi, 19, was mutilated as punishment for running away from her abusive husband and in-laws a year ago caused an international outcry. Full news...
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December 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Iran is financing a range of Afghan religious and political leaders, grooming Afghan religious scholars, training Taliban militants and even seeking to influence MPs, according to cables from the US embassy in Kabul. The dispatches, relating conversations between American and Afghan officials, build up a picture of mounting Iranian involvement in its eastern neighbours. Full news...
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December 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Mail Online: Classified diplomatic cables lay bare the extent of corruption at the highest level in Afghanistan, with cash apparently pouring out of the country. One report claims former vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud flew into Dubai with $52million in cash and was never asked to explain where it came from. Full news...
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December 2, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and “quash” the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks. Full news...
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December 1, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Pakistan's army is covertly sponsoring four major militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and Mumbai attackers Lashkar-e-Taiba, and “no amount of money” will change the policy, the US ambassador warned in a frank critique revealed by the state department cables. Full news...
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November 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the release of numerous dangerous criminals and drug traffickers detained by US-led coalition forces, leaked American diplomatic cables revealed Tuesday. American officials said they had repeatedly rebuked the president and Afghan attorney general Muhammad Ishaq Alko for authorising the release of detainees over a three-year period. Full news...
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November 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: The revelation that Afghanistan's vice president was caught carrying 52 million USD in cash last year in a Persian Gulf tax haven (and was allowed to keep it) is only the latest bit of evidence that countless billions of U.S. taxpayer money have been wasted in Afghanistan due to mismanagement, fraud and endemic corruption. Full news...
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November 29, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CBS: While the Afghan army has made some strides in recent years, the national police force has developed a reputation for drug abuse, illiteracy and desertion. Earlier this month The New York Times reported that up to 19 Afghan police officers from southwest of Kabul defected to the Taliban en masse, taking their guns with them and burning down their own station house. Full news...
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November 29, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: Breaking news: secret US diplomatic cables tell us there’s corruption in Afghanistan. Ahmed Zia Massoud, Afghanistan’s former vice-president, was found to be carrying $52 million in cash – which a message from the American Embassy in Kabul, made public by Wikileaks over the weekend, said he was “allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination”. Full news...
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November 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The hills around dusty Nor Aaba are laced with gold but villagers have blocked work on a new mine in a dispute over jobs, a warning that Afghan plans to ramp up mining may bring trouble as well as treasure. Security and corruption problems that have made fighting the insurgency and setting up a credible central government so difficult... Full news...
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November 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Wall Street Journal: A fresh controversy is threatening to further mar the already messy aftermath of Afghanistan’s fraud-ridden parliamentary elections with the emergence of a videotape that appears to show an elderly Western woman soliciting an alleged bribe to fix the results. Afghan prosecutors and electoral officials identified the woman as a Hungarian... Full news...
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November 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government came under withering attack Friday, accused of trying to manipulate parliamentary election results by the political opposition and a senior vote official. The accusations threaten to ignite nationwide anger over the second Afghan parliamentary election since the 2001 US-led invasion... Full news...
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November 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
International Business Times: The U.S. Department of State is working overtime sending messages to ally capitals warning the impending release of classified documents by WikiLeaks could harm relations in what is seen as a pre-emptive move of unprecedented scale to neutralize the impact of the unveiling of embarrassing and compromising details about the inner workings of the government apparatus. Full news...
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November 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ABC News: Compass Integrated Security Solutions is owned by Peter McCosker, the son of former Australian cricket player Rick McCosker. Compass provided convoy guards for a food and fuel supplier in Afghanistan. The Armed Services Committee report last month alleged the company hired untrained guards and paid an Afghan major-general to recruit guards from the army. Full news...
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November 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: The United States is now spending nearly half a billion dollars a year in an attempt to establish the “rule of law” in Afghanistan. The central problem, according to the report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), is that corruption in Afghanistan is so widespread and entrenched that it severely undermines any effort to establish confidence in government institutions. Full news...
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November 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The First Post: At the Badam Bagh women’s prison in Kabul, home to 150 female inmates and 70 of their children, the chief warden, Lt Col Zarafshan, lowers her voice. “Because of my pain, my hurt and my sense of injustice, I am telling you this,” she says. “If we had a good justice system only about ten of these women would be in prison.” A recent UN report stated that at least half of women imprisoned in Afghanistan are there for moral crimes. Zarafshan puts the proportion a lot higher. Full news...
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November 14, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
McClatchy Newspapers: The coal dug here fires Afghanistan’s only working cement factory, a strategic industrial asset 150 miles north of Kabul that should be supplying building material for much of the country, generating cash and jobs and improving the lives of some of the world’s poorest people. Instead, the Ghori Cement Factory and the nearby Karkar Coal Mine have become symbols of the corruption, nepotism and mismanagement that pervade President Hamid Karzai’s government. Full news...
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November 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: The International Criminal Court (ICC) should start investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by various warring groups in Afghanistan since 2002 to help end a culture of impunity, says Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Full news...
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November 9, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: The Afghan government has dropped corruption charges against a top aide to President Hamid Karzai who was indicted by a US-backed taskforce for taking a bribe, an official said on Tuesday. Mohammad Zia Salehi, a senior official in Karzai's National Security Council, was arrested by the Major Crimes Task Force... Full news...
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November 5, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: Afghanistan's election authorities are being pressured by President Hamid Karzai and by Iran to alter the preliminary results of September's parliamentary races, adding new controversy to a fraud-marred election, officials and candidates say. Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghanistan’s main independent poll watchdog questioned on Thursday an unexplained increase of a million votes from initial turnout estimates after parliamentary elections last month that were marred by fraud and violence. Afghan election officials have hailed the poll a success despite throwing out as invalid almost a quarter of the 5.6 million votes it said had been cast on September 18. Full news...
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October 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ANI: About one billion dollars worth of U.S. aid has wound up in the hands of the Taliban and other insurgency groups, war analysts and government auditors say. Sub-contractors have reportedly diverted the funds from programs meant to stabilize Afghanistan. Full news...
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