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...

Seven-year-old Attiullah, who was wounded after a bullet entered his back coming out through his chest, sits on his bed at Mirwais hospital October 13, 2009 Kandahar, Afghanistan. According to his grandfather, Attiullah was shot by U.S forces as he was walking in the field near his home in the village of Sangissar, Panjway district watching the family's flock of sheep. The soldiers apparently shot at a vehicle that was supposedly Taliban and the boy got hit accidentally.      Full news...

The Boston Globe: Pink wigged-protesters and hundreds of other demonstrators wielding posters calling for peace converged on Copley Square in an antiwar rally yesterday. The regional gathering in Boston - one of more than 40 nationwide - brought protesters from throughout New England to shout, sing, and march against conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.      Full news...

IRIN: He sleeps in derelict outbuildings, eats dirty leftovers, wears tattered clothes and spends his days on the streets. He knows neither his name, nor his age, nor any relatives. People give him a wide berth despite - or because of - his frantic begging gestures. He is middle-aged and mentally ill in Kabul city. At least one in 10 of the over 700 street beggars arrested in Kabul in the past 10 months have mental disorders of some kind, according to officials in the government’s anti-begging commission.      Full news...

AP: Relatives of slain Afghan civilians wail next to their dead bodies in Ghazni, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 16, 2009. Four Afghan civilians, two men and two women from one family, were killed during an operation of coalition forces near Ghazni city, Gen. Khail Buz Sherzai, Ghazni provincial police chief said.      Full news...

RAWA News: Lecture given by By Marc W. Herold, Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, on October 15, 2009 at a public forum with Zoya of RAWA, “Afghanistan: Resisting Occupation and Fundamentalism,” organized by United for Justice with Peace and the Afghan Women’s Mission, held at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.      Full news...

Arab News: The designation “Graveyard of Empires” may be somewhat of an exaggeration when applied to Afghanistan but as long as NATO troops remain the death count rises. There is no accurate record of Afghan civilian casualties from 2001 to date, but, according to a report issued by the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), published last July, the civilian death toll is soaring year upon year.      Full news...

The Associated Press: The head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan acknowledged Sunday that there was "widespread fraud" in the August presidential election but refused to give specifics or lay blame to avoid influencing the ongoing recount. Kai Eide appeared before reporters to respond to allegations by his former deputy, Peter Galbraith, that the Norwegian diplomat had sought to cover up evidence of massive fraud allegedly committed on behalf of President Hamid Karzai during the Aug. 20 balloting.      Full news...

Indian Express: A suicide bomber on Thursday blew up his car outside the compound of the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital killing at least 12 people and leaving 83 wounded, including three ITBP jawans, in a fiery blast that had all the hallmarks of Taliban. The powerful blast blew up the mission watch tower, destroyed vehicles and left a trail of death and destruction with Indian Ambassador Jayant Prasad saying, "Indian Embassy was the target."      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Twenty five years old Shafiqa set herself on fire in Jowzjan province in Northern Afghanistan, Abdul Rahim, the chief investigator to Police department of Khanaqa said.He added, after the incident one of the neighbors informed the police and they transferred Shafiqa, who was badly burned, to the Shebrghan (center of Jowsjan) local hospital.      Full news...

The Washington Post: It was a scene repeated countless times during the Bush years: A few hundred people massed on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, holding photos of wounded children or carrying coffins. They chanted antiwar slogans, acted out waterboarding and pretended to die on the sidewalk. Those who refused orders to leave the area -- including ubiquitous activist Cindy Sheehan -- were arrested.      Full news...

AFP: Eight years after the fall of the Taliban ushered in a new era for Afghanistan, the country remains a black hole for foreign aid donors who have seen little development for their money. Western governments have poured 20 billion dollars into Afghanistan since late 2001 but perceptions of waste are compounding hardening public attitudes to the increasing numbers of coalition military deaths. A foreign military officer said that much of the war-torn country was mired "in the Stone Age", with even the capital Kabul lacking basic infrastructure.      Full news...

AKI: Two Afghan civilians were killed and two others were injured in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika on Thursday when a bomb exploded at a wedding party, according to a provincial official. The official said the blast occurred at a wedding party in Paktika's Argun district, the spokesman was quoted as saying.      Full news...

RT (RussiaToday.com): Most Afghan women are illiterate, face poverty, have limited access to healthcare, and subjected to continued and widespread violence. As if this is not enough, they are often arbitrarily imprisoned for “moral crimes”. Under the Penal Code of 1976, which is still in force, women can be punished for offences defined as “moral crimes”. These are mainly adultery and running away from home, often both combined.      Full news...

AGI: Six children and three women were killed during a NATO air raid in the province of Helmand, southern Afghanistan. The new accidental killing of civilians was reported by Daud Ahmadi, spokesperson of the provincial governor. The raid, which claimed the life of 4 armed Taliban, was ordered as a reply to an attack against a convoy of NATO and Afghan forces in a village located in the Nad Ali district.      Full news...

AFP: A young Afghan girl died after a box of public information leaflets, dropped by a Royal Air Force plane over Afghanistan, landed on her, a newspaper said Wednesday. The Ministry of Defence said it was investigating the accident which it described as "highly regrettable," The Times said. The drop occurred over a rural area of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on June 23 as part of an information campaign, the newspaper said.      Full news...

The Associated Press: A Taliban ambush on a highway left six truckers dead, and a roadside bomb killed another six Afghans in a crowded van, the government said Monday — the latest sign that insurgent violence is spreading across the countryside. Afghanistan's civilian death toll has risen alongside that of U.S. and international forces this summer to more than 1,500 this year — three-quarters of them at the hands of militants, according to a recent U.N. report.      Full news...

PAN: US forces shot dead a schoolboy on his way home in the southeastern province of Paktika on Monday, the victim's father said. Ghulam Shah, father of the 13-year-old Zeeshan, told Pajhwok Afghan News his son was returning home on a bicycle from school. He alleged NATO-led soldiers opened fire on the boy in Madatkhel area on the outskirts of Sharan, the provincial capital.      Full news...

The Australian: One Afghanistan veteran, in his early 20s, is in a private hospital in NSW. He has lost both his legs. The doctors and nurses treating him are sworn to secrecy. Were someone to ring the hospital's reception, asking for him by his real name, he would not exist. As far as the public knows, his terrible injuries never happened. There was no media release from the Defence Department giving even cursory details of this man's suffering.      Full news...

Reuters: Seventeen-year-old Nowruz was celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid with his father, mother and 11-year-old sister when 50 Taliban gunmen attacked their home with rockets and gunfire and killed him. The Taliban's target on Tuesday night was Nowruz's father Esmatullah, a police commander whose job had obliged him to move his family to the mainly Pashtun Guzara district of western Afghanistan's mainly stable Herat province.      Full news...

PAN: Six people were killed and several others wounded in an air strike by foreign forces in Arghandab district of the volatile southern Kandahar province, residents said Thursday. The air raid was conducted late Wednesday night in Nagahan area that lasted one hour, according to residents, who had brought their injured relatives to the Mirwais Civil Hospital in Kandahar City.      Full news...

PAN (translated by RAWA): Eight civilians are killed and four others wounded in the air strike by foreign troops, a number of residents from the Marja district of Helmand province are claiming... Another resident named Norullah from the same district told PAN that there were no Taliban near this village but the armed Taliban from the nearby village had fired on helicopters.      Full news...

CounterPunch: I want the women of Afghanistan to be liberated. Do I have to support the war? Short answer: No. In fact, supporting the war only works against their liberation. If you can’t stand the idea of The Handmaid’s Tale come to life; set in a dusty, third world country and despise the thought of women being kept out of schools and in large respects the outright chattel property of their fathers or husbands, then in fact you must      Full news...