Veterans Today Network: As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple “drum beating” for an Israeli attack in Iran to get at the gas supplies needed for her secret pipeline deals, her “shill” in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is simply no longer credible.      Full news...

Telegraph: Government denials of such abuse are the result of a "head in the sand" attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. They are the latest allegations of British complicity in torture following investigations into MI5 and MI6. Human rights lawyers have assembled details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, electrocution, and whipping with rubber cables.      Full news...

FOX News: In recent weeks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s anti-western behavior has become well known to even the most casual observers of Afghanistan. First, he stood next to, and appeared to agree with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian President called America and its international allies fighting in Afghanistan “occupiers.” Days later, Karzai told supporters in a closed door meeting he might consider joining the Taliban if his western partners didn’t stop pushing him to clean up government corruption and interfering in Afghan affairs.      Full news...

In late 2001, after helping kick the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan, two militias allied with the United States raped and plundered their way through your villages. One was the ethnic Uzbek militia of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; the other was made up of ethnic Hazara followers of the warlord Muhammad Mohaqiq. They killed your men, slaughtered and stole your livestock, pillaged your homes, and violated your sisters, mothers, and daughters. Some of them took the time to explain why they had picked you as their victims: Because you are Pashtun, the ethnic group that made up most of the Taliban.      Full news...

The Associated Press: With a U.S.-led offensive only weeks away to clear the Taliban from this key southerncity, many residents blame foreign troops and the Afghan government as much as the Taliban for pushing Kandahar toward the brink of chaos - the very thing the military hopes to reverse. The goal of the operation by U.S., NATO and Afghanforces is to shore up a local administration that nominally controls the city and break the grip of warlords and influence peddlers, who are thought to have allowed the Taliban in.      Full news...

Winnipeg Free Press: The system by which Afghans and their families are compensated if they are injured in an American military attack has increasingly become a source of outrage among Afghans who say they feel a price is being put on their lives. The practice has come under particular criticism since the major U.S. offensive in Helmand province.      Full news...

Toronto Star: Did Canadian troops use Afghanistan’s notorious security services as “subcontractors for abuse and torture?” That’s what the Commons committee on Afghanistan heard this week from Ahmadshah Malgarai, an Afghan-Canadian who worked as an interpreter in Kandahar. “If the (Canadian) interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to NDS (the National Directorate of Security) for more questions, Afghan style,” Malgarai told the committee Wednesday.      Full news...

The Express Tribune: The US is improvising its policy in Afghanistan based on this review and on Obama’s subsequent policy interventions, including the commitment to increase the force level in Afghanistan by another 60,000 troops during 2010. Despite these changes no major improvement has occurred in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban have become more aggressive and are stronger than before.      Full news...

RFE/RL: In Koshan, along western Afghanistan's border with Iran, Arbab Zarif has just buried his brother. "Look how they hurt us," he says. "Look what is happening to us." Zarif's brother was executed in Iran for allegedly trafficking drugs. He says he had no defense lawyer and that Iranian authorities then added insult to tragedy.      Full news...

Xinhua: A huge explosion took place in Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan late Thursday, killing at least 11 people and injuring 18 others. Xinhua's reporter saw military helicopters hovering over the bombing site, which is located at the city's business center called Aljadid Market. A police official who insisted on anonymity told Xinhua that it was a suicide car bombing attack.      Full news...

AP: A gunman lying in wait shot and killed an 18-year-old woman as she left her job at a U.S.-based development company Tuesday, casting a spotlight on a stepped-up campaign of Taliban intimidation against women .... Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power, fear again dominates the lives of many young women and girls in the violent south...      Full news...

Quqnoos: Human rights bodies are concerned about the rise of women self-burnings in Paktia province. Daud Afzali, the head of the Human Rights Independent Commission, said during a session in southeast Afghanistan on ways how to reduce violence against women that several factors have boosted the self-burnings.      Full news...

The Globe and Mail: U.S. troops fired on a crowded passenger bus on the outskirts of Kandahar city, killing four civilians and injuring 18 others, stoking anti-American protests that promised to complicate a massive offensive against Taliban insurgents this summer. Although the military command issued an apology, saying it “deeply regrets the tragic loss of life,” Monday’s incident cast fresh doubts on Operation Omid, billed as the pivotal offensive of the war, which will see tens of thousands of NATO troops attempt to seize control of Kandahar.      Full news...

Reuters: Foreign forces opened fire on a bus in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four civilians and wounding 18 others, a provincial official said. The issue of civilian casualties caused by international forces is an emotive one in Afghanistan and undermines support for their presence in the country.      Full news...

The Guardian: A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today. The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security.      Full news...

The Times: US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.      Full news...

CBC News: German troops have admitted they accidentally killed six Afghan soldiers during a gunfight with what they thought were Taliban insurgents, the Afghan army said Saturday. Three Germans died in the incident Friday in northern Kunduz province. German soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier opened fire after coming across two civilian vehicles that refused to stop.      Full news...

Reuters: For the shy Afghan girl who sat quietly in a detention center with a pale blue headscarf, teenage rebellion had come at a heavy price: seven years in prison. Engaged to an older man who had offered $5,000 to her father but in love with a boy she spoke to on the phone, the 16-year-old girl was hauled before a court that found her guilty of running away from home, according to an account she provided.      Full news...

RAWA News: Another year another peace rally. The wars rage on, and the struggle continues. Like at all the others, I felt inwardly horrified. A billion wailing voices echoed in my mind. On we go with this tragedy of intention and this comedy of errors while the bodies pile higher. I long to take the needle off this skipping record and rest it on my broken heart. There alone can truth be sourced. A mind is too easily corrupted.      Full news...

RAWA News: Examining a microcosm can shed light on the larger reality. I have chosen to analyze a small mountain hamlet, Chagoti Ghar (Chergotah), located some forty kilometers east of Khost city in eastern Afghanistan in a time frame separated by eight and a third years – November 23rd 2001 and March 24th 2010. Both times, two Afghan civilians perished as a result of foreign occupation fire. In both instances, the U.S corporate media was silent. Both times, to pierce the veil of silence spun by the American military industrial media information complex (MIMIC) a person had to turn to independent, regional media; in November 2001 to the Peshawar-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency and in March 2010, to the Kabul-based Pajhwok Afghan News.      Full news...

Rethink Afghanistan: recently, we spoke with Afghanistan-based journalist Jerome Starkey about his reporting on special forces raids that killed civilians and NATOs surprising–and disappointing–response. This video contains disturbing images, and an even more disturbing story of violence, and an attempt to silence a truth-teller. It shows why its absolutely essential that we keep pushing back against the Pentagon’s message machine.      Full news...

UN Dispatch: During the first half of Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990’s, Hekmatyar’s forces committed atrocities that elsewhere in the world are met with international arrest warrants and indictments for war crimes and crimes against humanity –not hints of future inclusion in government.      Full news...

Reuters: The United States is considering a proposal to hold foreign terrorism suspects at the Bagram military base in Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reported this week, a new Guantanamo Bay just as it is trying to close down the original facility in Cuba. Given the amount of trouble that Washington has run into for running a detention centre where prisoners have no access to the U.S. court system, it sounds like a bad idea to be setting it up in Afghanistan, say experts.      Full news...

IRIN: Afghanistan’s hard-won post-Taliban human rights achievements are being eroded due to the persistent immunity from prosecution of powerful figures, the intensifying conflict, and the adoption of laws which undermine justice and human rights, a UN official warns.      Full news...

Reuters: The United Nations urged Afghanistan on Thursday to repeal a law that grants a blanket pardon for perpetrators of war crimes and rights abuses, saying the law could hamper efforts to make peace. Afghan and international human rights groups expressed alarm earlier this month at the law, which appeared to have been enacted unannounced and gives immunity to all members of armed factions for acts committed before the Taliban’s ouster in 2001.      Full news...

IRIN: Hidden on roadsides, behind boulders or on cultivated land, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are killing or maiming dozens of civilians every month, according to rights groups and government officials. IEDs killed 773 civilians in 2009 - over 32 percent of the total 2,412 civilian deaths - according to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.      Full news...

The Nation: Taliban militants have beheaded four tribesmen accused of spying for US forces, police said. The bodies of four men were found near Mir Ali town in North Waziristan tribal district, which borders Afghanistan. Officials said the four were kidnapped by the Taliban about ten days ago.Gul Akber Khan, who lives in the village of Srakhula, just outside of Mir Ali, said he heard gunshots in the middle of the night.      Full news...

Newsweek: Mohammad Moqim watches in despair as his men struggle with their AK-47 automatic rifles, doing their best to hit man-size targets 50 meters away. A few of the police trainees lying prone in the mud are decent shots, but the rest shoot clumsily, and fumble as they try to reload their weapons. The Afghan National Police (ANP) captain sighs as he dismisses one group of trainees and orders 25 more to take their places on the firing line.      Full news...

The Times: A family whose members were killed in a botched night raid in eastern Afghanistan have rejected “blood money” from the Government and vowed to carry out suicide attacks unless the perpetrators are brought to justice. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a policeman and his brother were shot dead on February 12 by unidentified gunmen. Eight men were arrested in the raid on the village of Khataba in Paktia province. They have all been released.      Full news...

Eurasianet.org: Sakina is angry. “Who is Karzai to forgive the deaths in my family?” she fumes. “Was his home looted? Was his son killed? What gives him the right to forgive on my behalf? He has no right.” The source of Sakina's ire is Afghan President Hamid Karzai's reconciliation initiative. The middle-aged widow from Dasht-e Barchi, a poor neighborhood of west Kabul, lost her husband and niece in the conflict, and feels that Karzai's administration is taking away her right to justice.      Full news...