IFRC: Harsh winters are always a major cause for concern in Afghanistan. The country's geography and its unstable security situation pose a huge challenge to international organizations trying to assist vulnerable communities in remote villages. When the temperature drops, it becomes difficult for people in remote areas to find food, with farmers unable to provide a solution in the harsh climatic conditions.      Full news...

CNN: Five-year-old Marjan sniffles from the cold as she struggles under her load. Hoisted on her back is a bag almost as big as she is. Instead of going to school, Marjan scavenges for hours with her 10-year-old aunt collecting trash. It is a heavy burden for such a small child but a necessary one.      Full news...

Reuters: Worsening security and enduring conservative Islamic customs prevented almost five million Afghan children from going to school in 2010, a government official said on Saturday. The strict Islamist Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-backed Afghan forces nearly a decade ago, but many women are still not able to work outside the home and girls are prevented from attending school in remote parts of the country.      Full news...

UNAMA: Abdul Karim (not his real name) is a nine-year-old Afghan child. He waits under the street traffic light in downtown Herat for the cars to come and cleans their windscreens in the hope of gleaning some money. Abdul is the only breadwinner for his three-member family. He lost his drug-addicted father two years ago, and now supports his family by doing this hard work every day, sometimes begging.      Full news...

Medair: High in Afghanistan’s mountains, Yusif Habib, a father of five, lives in the remote village of Zermod-Payan. For generations, this tiny village's main source of drinking water has been a rushing mountain river. “Every day, I make seven trips to the river with two 20-litre jerry cans,” said Yusif. “And it is a long walk from the river, up the steep hill. It is very difficult in winter.”      Full news...

VOA: Growing insecurity and unemployment in Afghanistan is forcing Afghans into the capital, across borders and into the insurgency looking for work. Every day hundreds of men gather at Kote Sangi; one of the busiest intersections in Kabul. They fill the intersection waiting for work; they pass time talking and joking over cups of tea.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghan Abdul Wahab swings a heavy sledgehammer down onto a red hot piece of metal to mold it into a truck part, sweat dripping down a face marked with grime and soot from the fire, and with a focus rare for an 11-year-old. Wahab is one of about 1.2 million Afghan children in part or full time work, the government says...      Full news...

Los Angeles Times: A Pentagon report due out this week will probably try to convince us that the war in Afghanistan is on the right track. And yet a poll released this month surveying Afghan public opinion says otherwise. Although the poll results showed some bright spots, after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, security and day-to-day life in many regions of Afghanistan aren't improving.      Full news...

The Independent: The most extraordinary failure of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million Afghans live. In a series of interviews, they paint a picture of a country where $52bn (33bn Pounds) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war.      Full news...

Reuters: The United Nations on Saturday launched a $678 million humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan, where despite inflows of millions of foreign aid dollars, the world body said about a quarter of the population goes hungry. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg said some 7.4 million Afghans were living with hunger and fear of starvation, millions more rely on food help and one in five children die before the age of five.      Full news...

IRIN: Uncertain harvests are a perennial risk for rural Afghans, but two events stand out as exacerbating poverty - ill health, and the high cost of getting married, according to a new report. “While health expenditures placed considerable financial strain on households across different wealth groups, they hit the poor particularly hard,” says research by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).      Full news...

IRIN: Ali Ahmad, the sole breadwinner of an extended family in Kabul, has to decide whether to buy firewood to keep his children warm in winter or food to save them from hunger. “Everything is expensive… wheat flour, ghee, sugar, fuel and wood and I cannot afford them,” he complained.      Full news...

The National Forum: It is estimated that one littoral combat ship costs $613 million. According to World Bank figures, that sum would be enough to educate 6.8 million children in Afghanistan for nine years - or we could buy one warship. Which investment would do more to strengthen Afghanistan and Afghan civil society? The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom have estimated that $287 billion dollars has been spent on the war in Afghanistan. Senator Cameron provided us with some of the forward estimates, and they are breathtaking. This translates to a $300,000 cash payment to everyone in Afghanistan for the price of the deployment and the war - or, incidentally, a cheque for $13,400 for every Australian.      Full news...

IRIN: Afghanistan has climbed over a dozen places up the annual UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) - from 181 out of 182 countries in 2009, to 155 out of 169 this year. Described as a human development indicator, the HDI "measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living."      Full news...

Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET): Internally displaced households and repatriated Afghan refugees from Pakistan in cereal deficit areas in east, south, and central Afghanistan are expected to be moderately to highly food insecure. There food security condition will worsen as Afghanistan's lean season starts in January.      Full news...

PAN: Ten out of 100 families in northern Balkh province earn a living with the assistance of others while 80 percent people are living in extreme poverty, an official said on Tuesday. Dr. Fardin, food in charge at the ActionAid International Organisation in the north, told a press conference in Mazar-i-Sharif that the 10 families out 100 included widows, disables, orphans and labourers who fulfilled their daily life needs with the help of others.      Full news...

CNN: The grease-covered orange overalls can't hide 14-year-old Nazer Ahmad's frail frame. As he leans under the hood of a wrecked car, torn plastic sandals on his feet, I know I cannot possibly understand the life this young boy is forced to lead in war-torn Afghanistan -- where jobs are few, pay is appalling, and young children must work rather than go to school and play with their friends.      Full news...

The Nation: The Afghan War has now entered its 10th year. It has become the longest US war. As of 7 October 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the human cost of the Afghan War has been estimated as about 4.9 million violent deaths or non-violent avoidable deaths from Occupier-imposed deprivation.      Full news...

France 24: Afghanistan’s health authorities Friday appealed for international help in dealing with a parasitic disease that is believed to threaten millions in the impoverished country. Leishmaniasis, transmitted by a species of sandfly, threatened the health of 13 million Afghans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a report on neglected tropical diseases.      Full news...

The Guardian: Sala Khan Khel, 40 miles outside Kabul, looks like a rural paradise at harvest time. Women and children play behind the high mud walls of the old houses, the men thresh the wheat, teenagers pick walnuts and the water coming straight off the snowy mountains high above the village gurgles through the irrigation canals. But the rural idyll hides conflict, deep poverty and growing environmental degradation.      Full news...

The Financial Times: In the ornate Shahista restaurant in Dubai, Afghans in traditional robes break the Ramadan fast with fare from their homeland, including “zaban” – or sheep’s tongue. Yet the fleet of tinted and customised Mercedes parked outside the restaurant shows that the diners are not Afghan labourers who toil on the United Arab Emirates’ construction sites but scions of their country’s elite.      Full news...

PAN: During Ramadan, Dowlat Hussain wakes before the sun to perform his morning prayers, but there is nothing to eat for Sahari, he says, as “we live in a cave like animals”. Hussain and his family, like hundreds of others too poor to build or rent their own home, live in the honeycomb network of caves that surround the two destroyed Buddha statues in central Bamyan province.      Full news...

UKPA: According to a latest research, Afghanistan tops the list of 163 countries which face the risk of food shortages. The ongoing violence and the country’s vulnerability to climate extremes like drought and flood have made food security hit rock-bottom. Afghanistan is at greater risk of suffering disruption to its food supplies than any other country, new research has found.      Full news...

Tribune Media Services Inc.: As Gen. David Petraeus assumed his new command in Afghanistan earlier this month, he took up a strategy that has already failed - though not for the reasons most people assume. Certainly, as most everyone knows, the battle plan appears hopeless. Every night in Marjah, Taliban killers post "night letters" in mosques and other public places, warning city residents they will be killed if they cooperate with the Americans.      Full news...

The Washington Post: For rent on Street 6 in the neighborhood of Sherpur: a four-story, 11-bedroom dwelling of pink granite and lime marble, complete with massage showers, a rooftop fountain and, in the basement, an Asian-themed nightclub. Price: $12,000 a month. It’s a relative bargain in this district favored by former warlords and bureaucrats — Kabul’s version of Beverly Hills.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Afghan people continued to suffer widespread human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law more than seven years after the USA and its allies ousted the Taliban. Access to health care, education and humanitarian aid deteriorated, particularly in the south and south-east of the country, due to escalating armed conflict between Afghan and international forces and the Taliban and other armed groups. Conflict-related violations increased in northern and western Afghanistan, areas previously considered relatively safe.      Full news...

PAN: High unemployment and deteriorating security is forcing hundreds of Afghan youths to risk an often perilous journey with ruthless smugglers in the search of a better life. Some pay with their lives. Others, such as Sher Rahman, spend thousands of dollars for the journey only to find themselves right back in Afghanistan.      Full news...

IRIN: It is well known that the Taliban, local criminals and international drug cartels profit enormously from the drug trade; that corruption is rife; and that huge amounts of aid money are pouring into Afghanistan. Less clear is the effect of all this on government power and the rule of law on which humanitarian aid organizations depend to carry out their mandate.      Full news...

Reuters: The world is ignoring the daily deaths of more than 850 Afghan children from treatable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia, focusing on fighting the insurgency rather than providing humanitarian relief, Save the Children said on Wednesday. According to the British charity, a child dies in the impoverished, war-torn nation every two minutes - mainly due to poverty, malnutrition and a lack of basic healthcare - and Afghan children have the worst chance in the world of surviving to their fifth birthday.      Full news...

The Associated Press: The majority of Afghans live in dire poverty, despite an estimated $35 billion in aid being poured into the country between 2002 to 2009, the United Nations said Tuesday.A report by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights claims that over a third of Afghans live in "absolute poverty" and about the same number are only slightly above the poverty line.      Full news...