IRIN: Civilian deaths resulting from armed hostilities between insurgents, the US military, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and government forces have increased by 24 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2008, according to a report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. In May alone, 261 non-combatants lost their lives in conflict in Afghanistan, John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the Security Council at a meeting on 26 June.      Full news...

The Wall Street Journal: Today, the good, the bad and the ugly all flourish in Afghanistan—sometimes together, sometimes apart. But it’s not clear who is benefiting most from the drug trade. Is it the Taliban and al Qaeda or members of ­Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government? Statistics vary wildly, but the U.N. estimates that drugs bring in upward of $300 million annually to the Taliban’s coffers. That still leaves billions unaccounted for.      Full news...

Time: While abductions of foreign journalists can end and have ended in tragedy, the risks facing Afghan journalists are even greater. The Taliban and other lawless elements in the country are often motivated by the potential ransoms — sometimes worth several million dollars — they believe foreigners can bring them. Afghan journalists who fall into their hands generally do not offer the same moneymaking possibilities. And so the escape of Ludin, who like some other local journalists acts as a "fixer" for foreign correspondents, was particularly welcome.      Full news...

IWPR: Khadija Ahadi used to be the most active journalism student in town. At press conferences in Herat, she would always be there with her video camera, usually the only woman in the room. Nobody was surprised that she landed a job as the deputy editor-in-chief of Radio Faryad after her studies. But now her successful career has suddenly been stopped – by force. “Some men threatened me because I am a reporter, but initially I kept working and I didn’t tell my family because they would have stopped me,” said Ahadi, 32. “Then one day they threw two grenades in my house. I have not gone to work since.’’      Full news...

IRIN: Over 1,000 families in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, have opted to return to their home areas in the north and northwest of the country because of worsening insecurity and lack of aid at the camp. Mohammad Azam Nawabi, director of the refugees’ department in Kandahar, told IRIN 1,087 families had formally expressed their desire to return.      Full news...

Three women were killed and another eleven civilian injured in a clash between NATO and armed Taliban the previous day in Dare Peech of Kunar Province. According to the governor, the Afghan and NATO forces retaliated and a fight took place. Wahidi said that during the clash some of the bullets were fired in a populated area on people’s homes, as a result of which 3 women were killed and 11 others, including 6 children, were injured.      Full news...

Reuters: Taliban fighters beat musicians, shaved their heads and left them tied to trees overnight because they performed at an Afghan wedding, a village tribal chief said Monday, a sign of the fighters' growing influence. The militants have returned to areas in the east and south of the country, where violence has sharply spiked in recent years.      Full news...

Quqnoos: A US-led air strike has killed 22 people, including 10 civilians in the central Ghor province, officials said. Deputy Governor of Ghor province, Ikramuddin Rezazada revealed that at least 10 civilians were killed in Tuesday’s air raid, carried out by the US-led coalition forces. A day earlier, US forces in statement said a prominent militant commander, Mullah Mustafa, and 16 other insurgents were killed in the bombing. Later, Mullah Mustafa in a phone interview told Quqnoos that he is “not harmed in the incident”.      Full news...

PAN: Nine children and 11 suspected Taliban insurgents were killed in a Coalition bombing raid in the northwestern Ghor province, a police officer said on Wednesday. Acting police chief Col. Zainul Abidin told Pajhwok Afghan News the airstrike by US-led forces in Shahrak district targeted dreaded Taliban commander Mullah Mustafa and his accomplices.      Full news...

The Telegraph: Heavy weapons are continuing to stream across the Afghan border from Iran despite Barack Obama's attempts to enlist Tehran's help in fighting the insurgency, officials have said. Border police say they are regularly intercepting consignments of anti-tank mines and mortars bound for Afghan militants fighting Nato-led forces.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: Many Americans are profoundly ignorant of history, even regarding distant countries where the United States finds itself at war. One need not know much about Afghanistan's rich and ancient history, however, to learn some important lessons regarding the tragic failures of U.S. policy toward that country during the past three decades.... The Reagan administration sensed the most hard-line elements of the resistance were less likely to reach negotiated settlements, but the goal was to cripple the Soviet Union, not free the Afghan people. Recognizing the historically strong role of Islam in Afghan society, they tried to exploit it to advance U.S. policy goals.      Full news...

Christian Science Monitor: The Haqqani network is considered the most sophisticated of Afghanistan's insurgent groups. The group is alleged to be behind many high-profile assaults, including a raid on a luxury hotel in Kabul in January 2008 and a massive car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that left 41 people dead in July 2008.... Haqqani's son Sirajuddin has now taken the reins of the organization, according to intelligence officials. The younger Haqqani has proved more dynamic than his father, expanding the network greatly in the last few years.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Millions of people living in southern and eastern Afghanistan, terrorized by the Taliban, other insurgent groups and local militias ostensibly allied with the government, suffered insecurity that further restricted their already limited access to food, health care, and schooling. Indiscriminate attacks, abductions and the targeting of civilians reached unprecedented levels. The Taliban and other anti-government groups significantly expanded their attacks to cover more than a third of the country, including areas once considered relatively safe in the centre and the north.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Afghan officials say Iranian-made weapons have been found in Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province, Radio Free Afghanistan reports. The commander of state military units in Kandahar, General Sher Muhammad Zazi, and Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal told journalists in Kabul that a significant amount of drugs was seized from militants in Marja along with the weapons in a May 26 operation.      Full news...

MADRE: Women in Afghanistan are routinely denied basic human rights, including education, healthcare, freedom from violence, and freedom of movement. Afghan women who fight to change this reality are attacked and even assassinated by ultra-conservatives. Meanwhile, US airstrikes that kill civilians further endanger Afghan women and their families. They also increase the power of the Taliban and other reactionary forces as more Afghans turn to them for protection from the United States.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which was worth some $3.4 billion to Afghan exporters last year. For a cut of that, Afghan officials open their highways to opium and heroin trafficking, allow public land to be used for growing opium poppies and protect drug dealers. The drug trade funnels hundreds of millions of dollars each year to drug barons and the resurgent Taliban, the militant Islamist group that's killed an estimated 450 American troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and seeks to overthrow the fledgling democracy here.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: The drug trade funnels hundreds of millions of dollars each year to drug barons and the resurgent Taliban, the militant Islamist group that's killed an estimated 450 American troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and seeks to overthrow the fledgling democracy here. What's more, Afghan officials' involvement in the drug trade suggests that American tax dollars are supporting the corrupt officials who protect the Taliban's efforts to raise money from the drug trade, money the militants use to buy weapons that kill U.S. soldiers.      Full news...

Reuters: Mohammed Ali has no idea that the Taliban who once drove him from his home are staging a comeback in parts of Afghanistan. As a hired farmer, he is too busy worrying how to feed a family of seven on $100 a year. At the moment his children live off just bread and tea, but that is better than the harsh winter months when there is sometimes nothing. Many Afghans face a more urgent daily battle against poverty and hunger.      Full news...

Globe and Mail: What started eight years ago as a military operation to deprive terrorists of a safe haven from which to launch attacks on the West morphed, in the eyes of many, into something much grander: an exercise in nation building and bolstering human rights. The hopes for an improvement in the lives of Afghanistan's women have been sorely challenged recently by a series of events, from the horrific acid attacks on schoolgirls in Kandahar and the targeted assassinations of female politicians and police, to what is seen as the ultimate betrayal: the Afghan government's endorsement of the family law bill that appears to legalize rape in marriage.      Full news...

Reuters: Taliban militants publicly executed a man and girl on Monday for eloping when she was already engaged to marry someone else, an official said, in a sign of the grip the Islamists have over parts of Afghanistan. Hashim Noorzai, head of Khash Rud district in southwestern Nimruz province, said the two were executed by gun shots in front of a crowd of villagers.      Full news...

Toronto Star: A female provincial official known for fighting for women's rights was gunned down in southern Afghanistan yesterday... Gunmen killed Sitara Achakzai outside her home in Kandahar city and then drove off, said Matiullah Khan Qateh, police chief of Kandahar province. He said the four men drove up on two motorcycles and shot Achakzai as she was getting out of her car.      Full news...

A Pakistan News: Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of Pakistani Taliban, who claimed credit for the recent deadly attack on a police academy near Lahore, has links with the country’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), a media report said.Based in lawless border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mehsud was tipped off by ISI, to enable him escape attempts to capture or kill him in the last two years.      Full news...

Common Dreams: The proposed new Afghan law requiring (among other things), women to have sex with their husbands on demand and not leave home unescorted, has shocked the West. But for women in Afghanistan whose rights have always been bargaining chips to be given or taken away for political gain, it comes as no surprise. Despite the rhetoric from the Bush Administration in 2001 that “to fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women (Laura Bush),” Bush’s own military strategy set the stage for the new Taliban-like law today. In hiring the fundamentalist warlords of the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban, the US knowingly sacrificed women’s rights for political gain.      Full news...

UNOHCHR: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday urged the Afghan Government to rescind a new law, reportedly signed by President Karzai earlier this month, saying it would seriously undermine women's rights in Afghanistan and contravene the Afghanistan constitution as well as universal human rights standards.      Full news...

Times online: This grainy footage appears to show a 17-year-old girl being beaten by Islamic radicals in Pakistan’s northwestern region of Swat, where Sharia law was introduced after the government reached a truce with the Taleban in February.A local Taleban commander in the militant stronghold of Matta, 25 miles from the regional capital, Mingora, ordered the girl to be flogged a week ago after accusing her of adultery, according to local reporters.      Full news...

The Guardian: Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission. The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.      Full news...

New York Times: The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials.      Full news...

AP: A roadside bomb ripped through a van carrying civilians on a road used by foreign troops in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing 10 and wounding six, officials said.In the south, three Australian soldiers were wounded in another blast.The attacks are a reminder of the dangers facing Afghan and foreign forces as thousands of new U.S. troops roll into the country to try to reverse the Taliban gains of the last three years.      Full news...

IWPR: Mirahmad has a very important job to do: he is the mirab, or water regulator, in his native Pushtrod district of Farah province. It is Mirahmad who ensures that the villages under his control receive adequate water for thWhen the state-sponsored National Solidarity Programme, NSP, gave Pushtrod 200,000 afghani (40,000 US dollars) to clean out the Nawbahar canal irrigation canal, he was overjoyedeir fields.      Full news...

Daily Times: Respect for press freedom has fallen sharply in recent weeks in Afghanistan, a fact-finding mission report by international media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders said on Monday. The Paris-based organisation’s report said, “The murder of Jawed Ahmad, a reporter for various Canadian news media in Kandahar, the newspaper Payman’s closure as a result of pressure from conservatives and the government, and the supreme court’s confirmation of Perwiz Kambakhsh’s 20-year jail sentence are all evidence that press freedom is in serious crisis.”      Full news...