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March 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghanistan is the hardest place in the world to be a child, the South Asia regional director for UNICEF said, with high child mortality rates, poor levels of nutrition and rampant sexual abuse. "The situation in Afghanistan as a whole is one of the most dramatic in South Asia and also in the world. Afghanistan is the most difficult place to be born as a child," Daniel Toole said on a visit to Afghanistan this week. Full news...
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March 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Los Angeles Times: The men come at dawn, a ragged, anxious collection of faces peeking through scarves and hoping for work as they stand in a traffic circle beneath billboards advertising war heroes and washing machines. They are bricklayers, gardeners, hole diggers and carpenters. Sometimes they are tapped on the shoulder, most times they are not, so they hunch amid the cars and fruit stands, knowing that the higher the sun climbs the lower their chances of returning home with money in their pockets. Full news...
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March 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
DAWN: Almost half of school-age children in Afghanistan do not have access to education, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday as he inaugurated the new school year. “Five million school-age children in our country do not go to school, some because of war or because their schools have been closed by the Taliban or others, some because they do not have the ability to go to schools,” he said. Full news...
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February 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Afghanistan’s biggest private bank -- founded by the Islamic nation’s only world-class poker player -- celebrated its fifth year in business last summer .... Less publicly, Kabul Bank's boss has been handing out far bigger prizes to his country’s U.S.-backed ruling elite: multimillion-dollar loans for the purchase of luxury villas in Dubai by members of President Hamid Karzai’s family, his government and his supporters. Full news...
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February 4, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Canadian Press: There's a lot the sooty-faced boy doesn't know. His own name, for one thing. Or how much money he earns dishing out bowls of rice from his weathered metal stand. But he knows it's his job to feed his family. The boy leans an arm on the counter to chat with a visitor. If he had a dish rag tossed over one shoulder and a white T-shirt stretched over a beer gut, he'd look like a short-order cook at some Canadian greasy-spoon diner. Full news...
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February 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: In Shinwar, a district of Nangarhar province, there are two markets, one called Shadal and the other, Pikheh... these markets have one main commodity. And that commodity is women. In Nangarhar markets exist where women are sold. Cases have been reported where a woman was sold with her five children. Another woman was sold to five different people and returned back to the original man who sold her, then killed her. Full news...
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February 2, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: From the watchtower at an Afghan outpost, the Dutch soldiers can follow the growth of the pretty poppies that may one day pay for the weapons that kill them or their comrades. Taliban insurgents waging an increasingly deadly campaign against foreign troops make at least 100 million dollars a year from taxing Afghanistan's opium trade -- the world's biggest, US and Afghan officials say. Full news...
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January 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Channel 4 News: Women were promised greater protection after the invasion of Afghanistan, but Nima Elbagir finds an increasing number have forced to self-inflict injuries to escape abuse. When the Taliban were still in power the liberation of Afghanistan’s women was a cause celebre in the west - a moral justification for the invasion. Yet by the end of last year the United Nations was worriedly reporting that the number of violent incidents against women had risen to their highest since the fall of the Taliban. Full news...
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January 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Geo TV: The suffering of Afghanistan’s people has reached "unbearable" levels as the conflict has intensified and spread across the country, a top international Red Cross official said Tuesday. Decades of conflict have impacted every family in the country, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told a news conference in Tokyo. Full news...
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January 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Canadian Press: Pity the poor Kabul traffic police officer. Adding to the hazards of the job - dust, chaotic traffic and the occasional beatings from irate drivers - comes new insult to injury: No pay. The government just doesn't have the money right now, yet another sign of the precarious state of the country. Shafi Muhammad said he wasn't paid last month, but he's been promised he'll get his money at the end of this month. Full news...
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January 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Afghans paid $2.5bn (£1.5bn) in bribes over the past 12 months, or the equivalent of almost one quarter of legitimate GDP, a UN report suggests. Surveying 7,600 people, it found nearly 60% more concerned about corruption than insecurity or unemployment. More than half the population had to pay at least one bribe to a public official last year, the report adds. The findings contrast sharply with a recent BBC survey in which the economy appeared to top Afghan concerns. Full news...
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January 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Hundreds of families allegedly forced out of their homes in Kapisa Province, northeastern Afghanistan, by clashes between Taliban insurgents and pro-government Afghan and foreign forces have sought refuge in the eastern outskirts of Kabul. “There is always fighting, bombing and insecurity in Nejrab and Alasaay,” said one displaced man referring to the two Kapisa districts affected. He said he had lost his 15-year-old son in the fighting. Full news...
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January 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: In Kabul, even a traffic jam can provoke a comment on this Islamic nation's dismal state, which most people here believe is at its bleakest since the U.S. invaded to topple the Taliban in 2001. It's a striking sentiment when you consider it comes after eight years of international intervention, $60 billion in foreign aid and the lives of thousands of foreign troops and Afghan civilians. Full news...
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December 27, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
DPA: Aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) released Monday its list of the ten worst global humanitarian crises for 2009, with places like Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan making the grouping, along with failing efforts to fight malnutrition and HIV/AIDS. Full news...
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December 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Corruption and insecurity remained the big challenges for UN aid agencies to reach vulnerable and needy Afghans in the war-torn country, a UN official said Monday. "Insecurity and corruption are increasing the cost of our ability to deliver and transport goods and service to the needy people," Wael Haj-Ibrahim, head of United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a press conference here. Full news...
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December 21, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: While international forces in Afghanistan battle militants hiding in the mountains, aid agencies are fighting an even more elusive enemy: malnutrition. The World Food Program and UNICEF have launched a project to feed thousands of mothers and children — some too weak to cry. Aid workers hope a high-protein diet distributed through a network of village clinics can help them through the winter. Full news...
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December 12, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Global Research: These military forces will not be going to Afghanistan to set up vaccination programs or conduct literacy classes for Afghan girls. They are going there as part of the most destructive military machine on the planet, to wreak violence. The military machine that has bombed wedding parties, that has held thousands of young Afghan men in Bagram prison without charges, that kicks down doors in the middle of the night—this machine is being strengthened and further unleashed. Full news...
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December 11, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA News: Based on UNICEF survey more than half of all children under age five suffer from malnutrition... average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day ... but the mafia and puppet regime of such poor and devastated country, purchases a $4.2 million luxury apartment for residence of Zahir Tanin, and also a 5.4 million commercial space for the Consulate and the Permanent Mission to the United Nations. Full news...
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December 3, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Dozens of families who lost their homes after earthquakes in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar in April 2009 have moved to an informal settlement for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and called for urgent assistance. Two earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 5.1 on the Richter scale rocked Sherzad and Hesarak districts in Nangarhar Province on 16-17 April, killing 22 people, injuring 59 and destroying 290 houses; 300-600 livestock were also lost and 650 families made homeless, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Full news...
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November 25, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The FINANCIAL: Human rights activists have noted a large-scale growth in violence toward Afghan women, hundreds of whom are beaten, intimidated or sexually assaulted by men daily. According to the human rights activists' publication, the number of suicides among women has also grown... Over the last week, there were five such incidents. Full news...
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November 20, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
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...
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November 18, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
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...
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November 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Afghanistan, a recipient of billions of dollars in international aid, achieved another dubious distinction on Tuesday when an influential global watchdog ranked it as the second most corrupt nation of the world. The Berlin-based Transparency International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) Somalia stayed the world's most corrupt country, followed by conflict-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. Full news...
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November 5, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: The average per capita monthly expenditure of nine million Afghans is less than 66 US cents a day, and millions of other Afghans spend about $42 a month, according to a summary of Afghanistan’s new National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA). NRVA 2007/08 was produced by the government with European Union funding and in collaboration with aid agencies. A bleak picture is painted. Full news...
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November 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
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...
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October 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Residents of five districts in northeastern Badakhshan province on Wednesday said they could die of starvation due to shortage of food stuffs if roads blocked by continued events of snow avalanches were not cleared. The snowfall has blocked several parts of the highways connecting Raghistan, Yawan, Kuhistan, Shaghnan and Kofab districts to provincial capital Faizabad. Residents of these areas fear the blockades could lead to severe shortage of foods. Full news...
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October 27, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
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...
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October 20, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
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...
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October 18, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
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...
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October 6, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Dozens of families from the Kaldar and Shortepa districts of Balkh Province, in northern Afghanistan, have been displaced from their homes after the Amu River burst its banks, provincial officials said. The Amu - also called the Oxus - is the longest river in Central Asia, with a basin including the territories of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Full news...
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