IRIN: In Afghanistan, particularly in poor rural communities, child slavery and debt bondage practices are growing, but are often disguised as marriage, labour or family affairs not requiring state intervention. Haleem, aged nine, is a full-time servant for US$60 a month at Abdul Malik Khan's house in Zherok District, Paktika Province, southeastern Afghanistan. His tasks range from cleaning, washing, serving tea and baby-sitting to night patrols and gate-keeping.      Full news...

RAWA News: Much official ado has been made in Washington D.C. and in the U.S. corporate press about how the new Administration will be taking far greater care as regards Afghan civilians. Data analyzed below for January 2009 suggests that the deadliness of the Afghan war for civilians under the Obama clock significantly exceeds that registered under the outgoing Bush regime. Boys, women, girls, tribal leaders all have perished at the hands of the foreign occupiers.      Full news...

Wakht News Agency (Translated by RAWA): Authorities of the Human Rights Organization and Gul Afroz’s family, a girl who was raped, demanded severe punishment for the people accused of being involved in the crime; saying the order of the preliminary court of the Sar-e-Pul province is not enough. 13-year old Gul Afroz was gang-raped by two armed men three months back in the Kohistanat District of Sar-e-Pul Province. The accusers are not contented with the sentence of the court.      Full news...

SOS Children's Villages: Every day, as they go to school, girls in Afghanistan run a gauntlet of intimidation and harassment by youths carrying knives. From acid attacks, murder, torching of schools and sexual assault, violence against girl students is crushing the dreams of thousands of Afghan girls and women hungry to learn. In spite of the police presence near every school boys manage to tease girls and even kidnap them and sexually abuse them. In the past eight months, 138 students and teachers have died and 172 have been wounded in criminal and terror attacks, according to the Ministry of Education. About 651 schools have closed and another 122 school buildings have been blown up or burned down.      Full news...

IWPR: War crimes evidence disappearing in northern Afghanistan as perpetrators reportedly try and clear the bones from mass graves. Human rights activists say the perpetrators of these acts are trying to erase the evidence of their crimes by clearing out the mass graves that still dot the Laili desert. They want the government to act to protect the sites, so that those responsible can eventually be brought to justice. The AIHRC has received videotapes that appear to show armed men digging up bones and other remains from a mass grave in Jowzjan province, in northern Afghanistan.      Full news...

Wikinews: January 15, a United States military strike in the Afghan province of Laghman killed 15 people, according to U.S. officials. The U.S claims only militants were killed, but on Saturday, village elders disputed that claim with the allegation that the casualties were all civilians. However, this version of events was contested when a statement from the Afghani president's office declared that 16 civilians were killed, not 15 militants. That statement also claimed that two women and three children were among the dead.      Full news...

Antiwar.com: A "team of rivals" is how the Obama administration is being portrayed by the head-over-heels media, which started out by likening the new president to Lincoln and may end up comparing him – favorably – to God. Yet I'm not optimistic, for two very good reasons: Dennis Ross, whose appointment as plenipotentiary for Middle Eastern affairs seems to undercut what is likely to be the Mitchell approach, and Richard Holbrooke, whose dual domain of Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the focus of U.S. military action in the coming years. Specifically, more than 14 years – at least, that's what Holbrooke told us in a pre-election piece in Foreign Affairs magazine:...      Full news...

The New York Times: The outrage over civilian deaths swelled again over the weekend. Hundreds of angry villagers demonstrated here in Mehtarlam, the capital of Laghman Province, on Sunday after an American raid on a village in the province on Friday night. The raid killed at least 16 villagers, including 2 women and 3 children, according to a statement from President Hamid Karzai. They agreed that 13 civilians had been killed and 9 wounded when American commandos broke down doors and unleashed dogs without warning on Jan. 7 in the hunt for a known insurgent in Masamut, in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan. The residents were so enraged that they threatened to march on the American military base here.      Full news...

South Asia News: US-led forces claimed Saturday they killed 15 rebels, including a female fighter, in eastern Afghanistan. However, a provincial lawmaker and local villagers said that 21 Afghan civilians were killed in the operation. Eleven militants were killed in the firefight, while four others were killed in an airstrike, it said, adding that a female fighter was killed 'while maneuvering on coalition forces and was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.' However, Abdul Rahimzai, head of Laghman's provincial council, said that Friday night's attack killed 21 civilians and wounded several others.      Full news...

PAN: Locals and tribal elders Tuesday claimed the US-led coalition troops killed 25 civilians including five women; however coalition troops claim eliminating 18 militants during an operation in central Kapisa province. The sweep was conducted in Anzari Village of Tagab district in the central province late Monday night. Bai Jan, a resident of Anzari Village told Pajhwok Afghan News the US-led soldiers blew up five houses of ordinary people at approximately 2:00am.      Full news...

La Dépêche.fr: Fundamentalism and corruption could lead to the collapse of Afghanistan in the very near future – not to the democratic and peaceful country that the world promised to create seven years ago. In the past 11 months, more than 4,000 people, including civilians, Nato troops and aid workers, have been killed. The Afghan Minister of Defence has 65,000 troops but has said that he needs 500,000 to control Afghanistan.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: On October 1, 2008, the Department of Defense published a summary of a report by Brig. Gen. Michael Callan of its investigations into USairstrikes on the village of Azizabad in Herat province on August 21-22, 2008. Since that time, Human Rights Watch has conducted additional research into theevents surrounding the Azizabad airstrikes, reviewed the facts presented in the summary, and analyzed the Callan investigation’s methodology. “The weaknesses in the Callan investigation call into question the Defense Department’s commitment to avoid civiliancasualties,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.      Full news...

PAN: Takhar police have arrested the husband of a young lady, along with three others, for murdering her in northern Takhar province. Brigadier general Ziauddin Mahmoodi Takhar police chief told pajhwok Afghan News that 18 years old victim was killed three days back by her husband with the help of three other people in Post Khor area of Taloqan city. Sufi Mohammad a neighbor of the victim said the couple used to quarrel, Anwar often used to beat her and we could hear her crying and shouting. He said that the very next morning of the night she died; he got information of her homicide but didnt know who exactly committed the crime.      Full news...

PAN: Four people were arrested in a rape case of a young girl in Baharak district of northeastern Badakhshan province, police said. Colonel Abdul Wadood, Baharak district chief told PAN on Sunday that these four men brought 14 year old Aziza to a house, raped her and later the girl was recovered from a barn. He said that two of the rapists were Badakhshan border police officials and the case has been submitted to the prosecution.      Full news...

The Earth Times: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned the reported killing of 17 civilians, including women and children, in a US-led coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan, the presidential palace said in a statement. Several demonstration have been staged in Afghan cities and rural areas to condemn the killing of civilians by foreign forces. Unable to seek revenge independently, many Afghan men in southern and eastern Afghanistan have joined the Taliban ranks after losing members of their families in international military operations, according to Afghan officials.      Full news...

IRIN: Maryam, 14, was raped by a man in the Yakawlang District of Bamyan Province, central Afghanistan, five months ago. Her mother and brother used razor blades to cut the girl open, take out the foetus, and bury it alive to hide the disgrace, according to Habiba Surabi, the governor of Bamyan. “The baby was alive when they took it from my body… and buried it as it was crying,” Maryam was quoted in the local media as saying.      Full news...

PAN: Locals of Sangin district of southern Helmand province Tuesday warned that majority of the residents were compelled to flee the area due to the airstrikes carried out by NATO-led ISAF forces without even informing the local security forces. Locals claimed that over 17 civilians most of them elders and children had been killed by ISAF soldiers during the last fortnight. The locals also criticized the irresponsible strikes of ISAF soldiers in a gathering participated by governor.      Full news...

PAN: Heavy casualties have been reported to locals in clashes between insurgents and ISAF soldiers in central insecure Uruzgan province.... Bari Dad who had barely transferred his injured kins in midnight dark to a hospital in central Uruzgan told this News Agency that due to heavy fighting people were unable to take their injured family members on time to health centers.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): A 12-year old boy in Faryab province was raped. General Mohammad Sadiq, commander of the Commanding Security of Faryab, told PAN that the boy was named Farhad and had been kidnapped a day back. Two men in a Corolla car had kidnapped him from the city of Maimana to the Shireen Tugab District and raped him there. He added that after that the rapists had intoxicated him and freed him from a Corolla car in the Friday Bazaar in Maimanah (capital city of Faryab) and escaped from there.      Full news...

Midland Free Press: What will it take to convince the Harper government that Canada's military invasion of Afghanistan was an ill-conceived, monumental blunder and failure? As of Dec. 28, 2008 the lives of 106 Canadian soldiers in the flourishing stage of their youthful development have been killed in a war started by George W. Bush and his hawkish Republican Administration. The loss of one Canadian in Bush's war, or what could become Obama's war, is one too many. Further in this regard, Barack Obama's ostentatious saber rattling during his election campaign and his more recent pronouncements on the subject, is not an auspicious or favourable beginning for a newly-elected president of the USA.      Full news...

Quqnoos: Coordination Council 15th anniversary Fifteen years from today on Jadi 11, 1372 (December 31, 1993) the Afghan civil war began in Kabul. This day is remembered as one of the worst days in the recent history of Afghanistan, as some analyst recall, “Rockets and heavy missiles were being fired from every direction in Kabul". It was the starting date to change Kabul city from a typical capital to ruins,Countless dead bodies were on the streets of Kabul in the following days. Kabul hospitals became full of wounded people and there weren’t enough medicine for them, and people were dying on daily bases.      Full news...

Tolo TV (Translated by RAWA): Rape victims demand severe punishments for the people involved in the crime. Two girls, thirteen and twelve years old, were gang-raped by powerful men and regional commanders in Sar-e-Pul about four months back. They say that till now no measures have been taken against the people who had raped them. They demanded justice from the government and legal and judicial bodies. Increasing cases of rape, especially those of children, have greatly worried people in the country. Human rights organizations have also expressed concern over the terrible aftermath of the rapes.      Full news...

AFP: Fourteen children were among 20 Afghans killed in new extremist attacks in insurgency-hit Afghanistan that also left two Canadian soldiers dead, security officials said Sunday. The children and two adults died in a powerful suicide car bombing in the eastern province of Khost, said the NATO-led force, which has troops across the country to fight the insurgents. "In the process he killed 16 Afghans and wounded 58 others," NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Recent statistics show that about 25% of women in the country are subjected to sexual violence. Younis Payan, deputy of the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA), who was giving a speech on the first day of a one-day workshop (A Happy Family and Intact Society from Islam’s Viewpoint), said the survey had been conducted recently. According to Younis Payan, the statistics show that about 30.7% women suffer physical violence and another 30% suffer from psychological violence.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The police in Farah province arrested five men-including a policeman -for kidnapping and raping a 15-year old girl and rescued the girl from them. According to him, the soldier of the Provincial Security Commander had kidnapped a 15-year old girl from the Farah city and took her to the home of one of his relatives, and there together with some other men raped her.      Full news...

PAN: Three of a family, including a couple and their son were killed by the firing of Coalition forces in Kandao area near NATO base in Khost City of the eastern Khost province. Tahir Khan Sabri, deputy governor of the province told Pajhwok Afghan News that coalition forces in an operation at the house of the brother of Dr. Bilal has killed his brother, sister-in-law and nephew.      Full news...

The First Post: Qadir, a short plump man constantly on the phone making social arrangements, did not join the Taliban for ideological reasons. He was in Kabul on an infrequent shopping trip, ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid. With deep black hair, beard and eyes, Qadir is Pashtun - the ethnic group from which the Taliban draws most of its support - and he sprawled low in the back of the taxi until we were able to stop and find a private room with draped windows where he propped himself up on a pile of cushions and smoked ferociously while we talked. "To begin with I thought the international forces would bring peace and stability," Qadir said. "Then they started treating Afghans as their enemies. Their Apache helicopters killed civilians working in the fields."      Full news...

AP: United States soldiers opened fire on a bus carrying civilians Friday in central Afghanistan, killing four passengers after the driver refused to stop, military officials said. At least 10 passengers were wounded, said Halim Fidai, the governor of Wardak Province. The military said the wounded had been evacuated to military hospitals. The shooting occurred about 40 miles south of Kabul, the capital, on the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar.      Full news...

IWPR: The Mirwais Meena girls’school used to be a bustling place with over 1300 students. But now the halls and grounds are nearly empty, the swings hang motionless on the recreation field. On a late November morning, there were only a dozen or so girls and three female teachers to be seen. The rest, traumatised by a vicious attack on November 12 that left several girls disfigured and two blinded, have chosen to stay at home.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime. When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers. Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.      Full news...