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February 4, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: A record number of Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict here last year, the majority at the hands of the Taliban and other insurgent groups whose use of homemade bombs became more prevalent and whose suicide bombers killed more people each time, according to the annual United Nations report on civilian casualties. Full news...
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February 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The following children froze to death in Kabul over the past three weeks after their families had fled war zones in Afghanistan for refugee camps here: Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1 ½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen ridges of the muddy floor. Full news...
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February 2, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Khaleej Times: With the stage set for secret talks in Qatar between the United States and the Taleban, US President Barack Obama’s strategy for a phased exit from war-ravaged Afghanistan is now being couched in nice-sounding terms that hide more than they reveal. In seeking a Faustian bargain with the Taleban, Obama risks repeating US policy mistakes that now haunt regional and international security. Full news...
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January 30, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The young Afghan woman gave birth to a third girl three months ago — to a husband, the authorities say, who had been demanding a boy. Last week, the man and his mother, in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, put a rope around the woman’s neck and strangled her, the police said. Full news...
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January 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An Afghan driver was shot dead by Pakistani police in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday when he failed to pay 20 rupees (less than 10afs) in bribe, a transport union official said. A policeman killed Tawab Gul, an Afghan refugee, in the Pishtakhara locality of Peshawar, said Ayaz Khan, a member of the city transport union. The victim lived in Nothia area, he added. Full news...
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January 24, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Human Rights Watch: The dire human rights situation in Afghanistan showed few signs of progress in the past year, raising serious concerns about the future, Human Right Watch said today in its World Report 2012. While progress was made in Afghanistan in several areas, the general population and women in particular suffered from the widespread lawlessness and abuses by the security forces and armed groups, Human Rights Watch said. Full news...
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January 22, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Womensenews: In the summer of 2003, I met a girl in an Afghan town straddling the desert who would become an obsession for me. I knew her for only a few weeks, but those few weeks shaped the next four years of my life in Afghanistan. What I remember most about her is her scared look, a gaze that deepened her otherwise blank green eyes. Full news...
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January 20, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Hundreds of people took to the streets in a town in northeastern Afghanistan Thursday in protest over a night raid by Afghan and NATO forces that allegedly killed six civilians, an official said. A woman and a child were among the dead in the air and ground raid on Dewa Gul Vally, a Taliban stronghold in the Chawki district of Kunar province, on Monday night, provincial governor Fazlullah Wahidi told AFP. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Adelaide Now: Taxpayers will be hit with another 1 billion-plus USD bill to fund the war in Afghanistan next year as the Government struggles to conjure up a surplus in its May Budget. The cost of war hit 1.6 billion USD for last financial year or more than 1 million USD each for the 1550 Diggers on the ground. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: British military police have arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused children in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Wednesday, prompting a furious reaction from Kabul. The Sun newspaper reported that a sergeant and a private from the Mercian Battle Group have been arrested over claims that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents. Full news...
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January 15, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Incidents of violence against women increased in central Uruzgan province this year, when 60 cases were registered in the provincial capital alone, the Department of Women’s Affairs said on Sunday. Most of the incidents took place in far-flung areas, where some cases went unreported due to insecurity and other problems, Women’s Affairs Director Rana Sami Wafa told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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January 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest. Full news...
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January 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: Pentagon officials said Thursday they believed a video showing four Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans was authentic, and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta promised to investigate the incident, calling it “utterly deplorable.” As outrage over the explicit video spread, the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said the behavior was confined to “a small group of U.S. individuals”... Full news...
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January 8, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three policemen were detained in connection with the abduction of children in central Logar and southeastern Paktia provinces, an official said on Sunday. One policeman in Paktia and two in Logar were arrested on the basis of complaints from residents, the Logar crime branch chief told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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January 8, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Digital Journal: As America works to hand over control of Afghan detention facilities to the Afghan authorities, a new report by an Afghan investigative commission says inmates at a Bagram prison claim they have been tortured. The prison in Bagram, Afghanistan is known as “the forgotten second Guantanamo” but worse than Guantanamo. Full news...
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January 7, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Taliban have executed an 18-year-old boy on the accusation of spying for the government in southeastern Paktika province, an official said on Saturday. The victim identified as Sher Khan, was killed by the insurgent a day earlier in the Mohammad Khel village near the provincial capital, Sharan, the governor’s spokesman, Mukhlis Afghan, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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January 6, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Explosives hidden in a trash heap killed six children in southern Afghanistan Friday, police said, and five NATO troops were killed in roadside bombings in the volatile region. The children were rummaging through the trash for food scraps and bottles in the southern province of Uruzgon when the blast killed them, police spokesman Farid Ayal said. Full news...
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January 4, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Ottawa Citizen: The shocking story of a 15-year-old Afghan child-bride tortured nearly to death after being sent back to her abusive husband and his family illustrates the sad truth that Afghanistan remains one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman, despite the stated intentions of countries like Canada to change things. Full news...
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January 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Independent Human Rights Commission (IHRC) on Tuesday said violence against women has been on the increase in eastern provinces, where 49 cases of violence were registered in last three months. “Main reasons behind the increasing violence against women are non-prosecution of culprits and abject poverty,” IHRC director for eastern provinces, Dr. Rafiullah Bidar, told a news conference. Full news...
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January 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A mass grave, containing human bones and skulls, has been discovered in the Dehdadi district of northern Balkh province, an official said on Tuesday. The grave was found on Monday in Arzana desert, where a base of the 209th Shaheen Military Corps existed, public relations officer of the Corps, Lt. Col. Muhammad Naeem, told mediamen. Full news...
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December 31, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The International News Magazine: “In other words – and let’s say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld’s plan – the United States government is planning to use “cover and deception” and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people... Full news...
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December 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Digital Journal: Afghan girls, forced to marry when they are children or teenagers, are being tortured not only by their older husbands, but often by their family or in-laws. Usually it’s for no reason at all except that they are female. Women throughout Afghanistan are suffering domestic abuse, very often at the hands of their own family or in-laws. Full news...
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December 28, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday went on hunger strike against a delay in investigation of their cases and poor living conditions in the central jail in northern Takhar province. The jail superintendent, Brig. Gen. Abdul Rab, confirmed 600 inmates had gone on hunger strike. He said they were trying to convince the prisoners into calling off their strike. Full news...
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December 27, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Police rescued a teenage married girl who was kept locked-up in a toilet for six months by her in-laws in northern Baghlan province, officials said. The 15-year-old was found locked up-in the toilet after her parents informed police, the second police district chief, Col. Fazal Rahman, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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December 26, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Residents of a remote valley in eastern Kunar province on Monday protested against night-time searches of their homes by international troops and Afghan commandos. In front of the provincial council office in Asadabad, a large number of residents of the Shonkray valley in Sarkano district warned of joining opposition forces if the government failed to address their concerns. Full news...
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December 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Greeley Gazette: After 10 years of American blood being shed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two countries are ranked in a top 10 list of countries with religious persecution. Open Doors USA, an organization dedicated to helping Christians stand strong in the face of persecution, is set to release its 2012 World Watch List on Jan. 4. Full news...
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December 22, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: Before a bomb blast killed his son and injured three of his daughters, hospitalizing two of them, life was anything but easy for Ahmad Shah. Like many in his poor Kabul neighborhood, he eked out enough to survive by pulling a rickshaw-like cart made of scrap wood. Merchants who either had a small load or couldn’t afford a truck hired Mr. Shah to drag their goods across town on his cart. Full news...
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December 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AAP: Insurgents in Oruzgan Province are under such pressure from coalition forces that some are resorting to using children to assemble and transport improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Australia’s troop commander in Afghanistan says. Lieutenant Colonel Chris Smith, commanding officer of the Mentoring Task Force (MTF-3), said the province was mostly under government control but... Full news...
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December 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AntiWar.com: In the most high profile admission so far of what has been repeatedly acknowledged in private, Gen. John Allen, the top US commander in Afghanistan, today conceded that the US was ‘probably’ going to keep troops of some sort in the nation beyond 2014. Officially, of course, President Obama insists that the troops will leave in 2014, a date set at a past NATO conference. Full news...
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December 19, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO officials have clashed once again on the issue of nighttime raids by Western forces, this time over an incident that left a pregnant Afghan woman dead. A spokesman for the NATO force, Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, said Monday that the commander of Western troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen... Full news...