AP: The State Department's internal watchdog on Wednesday criticized the agency's nearly $2 billion anti-drug effort in Afghanistan for poor oversight and lack of a long-term strategy. The department's inspector general said the Afghanistan counter-narcotics program is hampered by too few personnel and rampant corruption among Afghan officials.      Full news...

The Times: When Afghan killers burst into a 12-year-old girl’s bedroom and shot her brother at close range it barely warranted an investigation. Police said that no one reported the crime. Were it not that the pair were President Karzai’s cousins — and that the murder had all the hallmarks of a revenge killing connected to a Karzai dynasty feud — the shooting would in all likelihood have languished as little more than a footnote in Kandahar’s long catalogue of violence.      Full news...

WSWS: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai announced his second-term cabinet last Saturday, retaining roughly half of his incumbent ministers, including those with the closest ties to Washington. Also included in the lineup are figures tied to Afghan warlords who helped him rig the presidential election last August.      Full news...

CNN: In the Afghan capital's department of motor vehicles, the simple act of registering a car can turn into days, even weeks, of waiting and frustration. Unless you pay off the right people. Mohammad Zarif Formolly had been waiting for a month to obtain documentation for his vehicle. Another man, who identified himself only as Jamaludin, traveled 50 miles from Logar province and had been waiting for three days.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Federal auditors have identified more than $950 million in "questioned and unsupported" costs submitted by Defense Department contractors. The figure excludes potential waste from contracts with other departments or agencies, such as USAID. The following are some of the cases of waste, fraud and abuse:      Full news...

The Associated Press: A U.S. government watchdog says the organization created to spearhead Afghanistan's battle against corruption has too little authority, independence and personnel to be effective. In an audit released Wednesday, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction says the leaders of the country's High Office of Oversight have conflicts of interest because they also serve as advisers to President Hamid Karzai.      Full news...

Reuters: The President spoke at length about the bribes ordinary Afghans are forced to pay and rebuked officials who "after one or two years work for the government, get rich and buy houses in Dubai." However, he also cast doubt on the biggest anti-corruption conviction his prosecutors have achieved in years.      Full news...

The Telegraph: Karl Eikenberry, a former commanding general in Afghanistan, said parts of the regime had transcended sectarian divisions within Islam to provide support for fundamentalist groups fighting Western forces in Afghanistan. "Iran or elements within Iran have provided training assistance and some weapons to the Taliban," said Mr Eikenberry.      Full news...

RFE/RL: When Kabul's mayor was sentenced to four years in prison on corruption charges this week, officials were quick to paint the sentencing as evidence of the "serious steps" being taken to eliminate graft and bribery in Afghanistan. Deputy Attorney General Fazal Ahmad Faqiryar, speaking to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan after the December 7 verdict, said that the case of Mayor Abdul Ahad Sahebi showed the "positive effects on society" that would result from the government's efforts to fight corruption.      Full news...

RAWA News: Based on UNICEF survey more than half of all children under age five suffer from malnutrition... average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day ... but the mafia and puppet regime of such poor and devastated country, purchases a $4.2 million luxury apartment for residence of Zahir Tanin, and also a 5.4 million commercial space for the Consulate and the Permanent Mission to the United Nations.      Full news...

Al-Jazeera: Two-years after she was beaten and raped by eight men, fourteen-year-old Samiya has yet to see justice. Her story stands in contrast to Western claims that the lot of women in Afghanistan has improved since the US-led invasion. Seven of the eight men who attacked Samiya were arrested, but her family believes their daughter's rapists have powerful connections and are looking for revenge.      Full news...

PAN: The National Participation Front (NPF) chairman has accused the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) head of corruption and demanded her immediate removal. Kabuli alleged Samar received bribes from warlords, removed their names from the list of war criminals and converted AIHRC into a safe haven for outlaws and human rights violators, besides embezzling international funds.      Full news...

Press TV: Unprecedented levels of drug addiction among Afghan women have raised concerns as the lucrative narcotic industry hurtles onwards. The Governor of Helmand Gulab Mangal says women comprise of 30 percent of the 70,000 drug addicts in the southern Afghan province, the website for the British state broadcaster BBC reported in its Farsi edition. The percentage amounts to 13,000-14,000 women, he added.      Full news...

Reuters: It seems every Afghan has a story about bribes. .... "If you want to do business in Afghanistan, you must bribe people every step of the way, otherwise your business will collapse. I think it seems almost impossible to root out corruption, because we can't live without it."      Full news...

McClatchy: President Hamid Karzai began his second term Thursday ... On one side of the cavernous room sat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's warned that the international community is losing patience with Karzai. On the other side was Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan warlord who's become a symbol of cronyism and government corruption.      Full news...

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...

TomDispatch.com: Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies -- Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid -- that helped to swell the election coffers of President Hamid Karzai as well as the family business of his running mate, the country's new vice-president, warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry denied all kinds of government intervention in the one-year contract of renting out 31 armored vehicles (each car costing $500 per day) for high-ranked officials of Defense Ministry.... Jangul Karger, the representative of Parwan province in the parliament gave this report to PAN according to which each armored Land Cruiser is rented out for $500 each day.      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...