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...

The Times: A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.      Full news...

BBC News: At least 30 people have been killed and 46 wounded in four suicide bombings in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, hospital officials say. The first blast happened at about 2000 (1530 GMT). Officials said the biggest attack was aimed at the city's main prison. The Taliban said they carried out the bombings as a "message" to Nato.      Full news...

HRW: The Afghan government should urgently act to repeal a law that provides an amnesty to perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today. The law was published unannounced in the official gazette, bringing it into force, despite repeated promises by President Hamid Karzai that he would not allow the law to go into effect.      Full news...

RAWA News:Let the numbers tell the story. The following presents a detailed summary and analysis of Afghan civilians killed directly - so-called impact deaths - by U.S/NATO forces in Afghanistan during a single month, February 2010. The Obama killing machine left 80-86 dead Afghan and Pashtun civilians. By contrast, the number in February 2009 was 50. The intent here is to set the record straight as regards Afghans killed by the U.S/NATO, and in so doing challenge the UNAMA to move beyond its “faith-based” counting.      Full news...

IRIN: As the world marks International Women’s Day, ambivalence, impunity, weak law enforcement and corruption continue to undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan, despite a July 2009 law banning violence against women, rights activists say. A recent case of the public beating of a woman for alleged elopement - also shown on private TV stations in Kabul - highlights the issue.      Full news...

PAN: Despite efforts at improving their overall situation, women continue to be the target of violence in western Herat province, officials said on the International Women's Day. The Women Affairs Directorate said on Monday 633 cases of violence against females were reported in the province during the last solar year. Human rights officer at the directorate, Soraya Baleegh, told Pajhwok Afghan News the cases were linked to an increase in the number of drug addicts and growing poverty.      Full news...

Scotland on Sunday: THE man chosen as the fresh face of good governance in an Afghan town just seized from the Taliban has a violent criminal record in Germany. Records in Germany show Zahir served part of a prison sentence for stabbing his son in 1998, but Interpol say he is not on any watch list or wanted for any crime.      Full news...

AFP: Afghan women may hold a quarter of the seats in their country's parliament but many are mere mouthpieces for warlords, who continue to set the legislative agenda, an Afghan women's rights activist said. "Today we have 68 women in the parliament, 25 percent... We have a group of women high in quantity, but low in quality," Voice of Women director Suraya Pakzad told a meeting in the US Congress to mark International Women's Day.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: The military helicopters swooped in from behind the three-vehicle convoy as it wound through a remote road in southern Afghanistan , and survivors of last week's deadly attack said they had no idea they were in danger until the lead four-wheel drive exploded. After seeing the gruesome aftermath of that rocket strike, survivors of the NATO attack told McClatchy , women jumped from the second car and frantically waved their head scarves to try to stop the attack.      Full news...

RAWA News: Future U.S wars in the Third World will involve massive use of drones to police the territory, employ local satrap forces (like those of Karzai’s Afghan Army) and once the territory has been pacified sufficiently, the deployment of “Government Ready-to-Rule (GRR)” kits. ... it represents the quintessential American way of “solving” problems with technological short-cuts, a military effort begun in 1942 with the Allied fire-bombing of German cities. The current American war in Afghanistan is a harbinger of what is to come, America’s electronic, troop-less war.      Full news...