The Guardian: I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.      Full news...

Reuters: Rape in Afghanistan is under-reported, concealed and a human rights problem of "profound proportions", the United Nations said on Monday. Norah Niland, the United Nations' human rights representative in Afghanistan, said field research conducted late last year and early this year found rape affected all parts of Afghanistan, across all communities and social groups.      Full news...

Examiner.com: It is truly astonishing to watch the cataclysmic implosion of the Obama administration. No one had ever been ushered into the White House with such pomp and enthusiasm. No one had spent so many hundreds of millions of dollars to convince people to vote. No one had garnered such global adoration. And no one had assumed the office with less experience.      Full news...

Sri Lanka Guardian: It is now very clear that the US and NATO have achieved nothing of substance in their adventure into Afghanistan and are sinking in the quagmire deeper every day. The US now desperately needs an exit strategy that looks like a win for two reasons: First its reputation as a mighty military power that can’t be beaten, and especially by tribal clansmen. Second if it withdraws empty-handed, how does it explain the rising number of troop deaths and the billions that are still being poured into a narco-state that is corrupt, in the middle of an economic down-turn at home.      Full news...

Xinhua: Police in the northern Samangan province of Afghanistan found bodies of two children, a private television channel reported Monday. "Police found bodies of two children who went missing four days ago in Samangan's provincial capital Aibak," Tolo broadcast in its news bulletin. Both the innocent kids, aged 8 and 12 respectively, had been killed by stoning and stick, police said.      Full news...

Press TV: Two Afghan teenagers held in a prison in northern Kabul say they have been abused by US forces in Afghanistan, The Washington Post has reported. In an article published on Friday, the newspaper said the Afghan teens had been held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.      Full news...

Al-Jazeera: The last time I stood by the bedside of a woman who’d tried to burn herself to death was in Kandahar one year ago. She was screaming in pain and later died. It was not an experience I wanted to repeat. But this week I found myself in the Burns Unit at a hospital in Herat watching a mother spoon feed her child some rice through lips that were horribly blistered.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The military's inspector general asked to be relieved of his duties after a newspaper reported the military knew civilians had died even as German ministers were denying the allegation.A Nato inquiry has since said up to 142 people including civilians died in the September 4 bombing of two hijacked fuel tankers in Kunduz province.      Full news...

The Telegraph: Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries, but three decades of war and an increasingly brutal Islamist insurgency have left it rich in martyrs and the misery their deaths leave behind. In little more than three months, in Kabul alone, devastating suicide attacks have killed around 100 people. About 300 people have been injured.      Full news...

Irish Sun: Children in Afghanistan are suffering from serious child abuse and high levels of mortality. United Nations officials, speaking in Kabul, have said children are being deprived in the worst possible ways with their rights being neglected despite vast flow of Western aid into the country.      Full news...

Reuters: "I was seven-year-old when I got married. I did not have kids till the age of 12. I became a mother of four kids. My husband is a drug user. I asked him to stop using drugs many times, but he wouldn't stop. I warned him that I would have no choice but to kill myself if he didn't quit using drugs. He couldn't do it, and that is why I burned myself."      Full news...

PAN: Department of Women's Affair in Baghlan province reports a worrisome increase in the scale of violence against women, including murder and suicide, this year as compared to the previous year. With heightened concern, the department says up to 74 cases of violence were recorded since the beginning of this year, against last year's 67 cases.      Full news...

National Post: In Afghanistan ruling politicians have publicly called Malalai Joya a "prostitute," "infidel," "traitor" and "communist." Some, whom he calls "criminals," "killers," "warlords" and "mafia drug lords," have threatened to rape her and, on four occasions, tried to kill her. But overseas, the tiny 31-year-old political activist and former school teacher has been hailed as "the bravest woman in Afghanistan" and compared to Burma's jailed democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.      Full news...

Reuters: Eight years after a U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, the war-ravaged state is the most dangerous place in the world for a child to be born, the United Nations said on Thursday. It is especially dangerous for girls, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in launching its annual flagship report, The State of the World’s Children.      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...

IRIN: Over two million Afghans have been killed or wounded in armed conflicts and violence over the past three decades but the desire for peace and stability has always been strong, nine NGOs say in a report published today. “A whole generation has grown up never having experienced peace and many Afghans are struggling to cope with the psychological, economic, social and physical ramifications of the conflict, past and present,” says the report entitled The Cost of War, Afghan Experiences of Conflict, 1978-2009.      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...

The Guardian: With his 9mm Smith and Wesson at the ready, the Afghan police chief strode through the bazaar of rickety wooden stalls, grabbed a hapless shopkeeper by the hair and slapped him across the face three times. One officer hit a man in the knees with his rifle butt. This was an afternoon raid on shops suspected of selling illegal radio equipment used in the making of IEDs (improvised explosive device). Moments later the contents of all the shops was thrown outside in a large heap of "evidence".      Full news...

PAN: Artillery and mortar shelling by the NATO-led international troops killed nine civilians in southern Afghanistan, locals said. People, who brought bodies of their slain relatives to Lashkargah, said the dead included three children and six men. They died as a mortar shell landed in the fields covered with maize crop, said the locals.      Full news...

Foreign Policy In Focus: While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war.      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...

Amnesty International: The German government should immediately launch a credible, transparent investigation into a 4 September airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed scores of people, many of them civilians, AI said on Thursday. ... Village elders provided AI a list of 83 people killed in the incident who the elders identified as having no affiliation with the Taliban.      Full news...

CNN: A young boy dressed in women's clothing, his face caked in make-up, dances the night away for a crowd of men. The bells on his feet chime away, mimicking the entertainment and sexual appeal of female dancers. But there is no mistaking his pubescent body and face as he concentrates, focusing on every step in order to please his master and his master's guests.      Full news...

PAN: US forces on Sunday opened fire at civilians in eastern Laghman province after coming under a bomb attack this noon, killing a civilian and wounding three others, an official and a tribal elder said.The incident came a day after foreign forces in Kandahar killed four civilians in a car after its driver failed to stop. The bomb attack happened on the US forces in Safi Qala area of Mehtarlam city, provincial capital at 1pm.      Full news...

PAN: NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have reportedly opened fire at a civilian vehicle in the southern Kandahar province, killing four people including two women, sources said Saturday. The incident happened in Chawni area of Kandahar City, provincial capital, at 3pm, said provincial information department. In a statement, the department condemned the incident that happened when the foreign forces were passing the area.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The Hindus in Kabul and Kandahar suffer from not having a proper area for cremation and are forced to move the bodies to other provinces and even across the border at some instances. According to their religious rituals, the bodies of children above two years of age are to be burnt whereas younger than that is to be buried.      Full news...

CNN via TRESSUGAR: This sobering CNN video takes us into one of only a dozen women's shelters in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to nongovernmental agencies, 90 percent of Afghan women are victims of domestic abuse. One woman is at the shelter trying to escape 15 years of abuse from her husband for not being able to conceive a child.      Full news...

The Nation: Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he needs more American troops to salvage something like winning in Afghanistan and restore the country to "normal life." Influential senators want to increase spending to train more soldiers for the Afghan National Army and Police. The Feminist Majority recently backed off a call for more troops, but it continues to warn against US withdrawal as an abandonment of Afghan women and girls. Nearly everyone assumes troops bring greater security; and whether your touchstone is military victory, national interest or the welfare of women and girls, "security" seems a good thing.      Full news...

IRIN: Ahmad Wali died in a bomb blast in Kandahar city on 25 August and Samim was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul on 15 September. Both men left grieving families with little capacity to cope on their own. “We could not afford to pay the rent so we left our old home and have moved into a small room outside the city,” said Samim’s eldest son, Arif. “My children cannot go to school any more because we cannot afford their education,” said Wali’s widow, Pashtana.      Full news...