The Guardian: Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex–military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort. In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting.      Full news...

Democracy Now!: In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Warlords helped drive the Russians from Afghanistan, then shelled Kabul into ruins in a bloody civil war after the Soviets left. Now they are back in positions of power, in part because the U.S. relied on them in 2001 to help oust the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Hamid Karzai later reached out to them to shore up his own power base as America turned its attention to Iraq after the Taliban's rout.      Full news...

South Asia News: A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, while television footage showed Taliban insurgents sorting and transporting what appeared to be US military ammunition sized by militants in two remote outposts in October. The US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the US military said in a statement without giving more details.      Full news...

PAN: Artillery and mortar shelling by the NATO-led international troops killed nine civilians in southern Afghanistan, locals said. People, who brought bodies of their slain relatives to Lashkargah, said the dead included three children and six men. They died as a mortar shell landed in the fields covered with maize crop, said the locals.      Full news...

FPIF: As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production. The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production.      Full news...

The Gargoyle: Last month, Barack Obama became the third U.S. president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. But unlike the countless followers of the lunatic Glenn Beck who think our 44th president is turning our country into Stalinist Russia, there is a more rational argument to be made against Obama’s recent award. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to a man who, like a character in a George Orwell novel, kills in the name of peace.      Full news...

The Independent: Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.      Full news...

Foreign Policy In Focus: While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war.      Full news...

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...

IPS: The revelation by the New York Times on Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) counter-insurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.      Full news...

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...

NPR: One of the factors President Obama must weigh as he decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan is the cost — not just in lives, but in dollars. With the economy still struggling, questions exist about how much the U.S. can afford to spend in Afghanistan — and for how long. Earlier this week, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the war in Afghanistan had already cost a "staggering" $243 billion.      Full news...

The New York Times: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.      Full news...

Time: But this time, if the New York Times charges are true, the revelations that Wali Karzai is both a major drug trafficker and that he has been protected not just by his brother but by CIA operatives as well, establishes a chain of causality between the efforts of U.S. intelligence to obtain information and influence, and drug monies that pay for a insurgency that has taken 53 American lives this month...      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...

Bay Area Indymedia: On October 20, 2009 Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to a November 7th run-off presidential election after almost a third of the votes he received in an earlier August 20th vote were deemed to be fraudulent by election investigators with the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission. Karzai did not do this willingly, but under pressure from the U.S. and its allies he had very little choice.But did the U.S. apply this pressure because its leaders have suddenly come to feel that the people of a country should choose its own rulers in fair elections?      Full news...

AFP: Afghan opium is unleashing a "devastating" impact across the world, according to a new UN report, funding the Taliban and other terror groups and killing thousands in consumer countries. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade that is worth some 65 billion dollars (43 billion euros), feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually, the report said.      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...

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...

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Sometime this week, we may learn who the president of Afghanistan is. Or we may not. Imagine: As President Barack Obama wrestles with whether to send more troops to fight the Afghan Taliban, it's still unclear whether the sitting president, Hamid Karzai, won the majority required to avoid a runoff. A five-man Election Complaints Commission charged with reviewing claims of massive ballot fraud has finished its work, but we're still waiting for its announcement. If the commission waits past this week, it may be too late to hold a second round before severe winter weather sets in.      Full news...

Mirror.co.uk News: Afghan warlords were bribed to prevent attacks on Italy's troops, a Taliban commander alleged yesterday. Mohammed Ishmayel said the two groups agreed not to attack each other after tens of thousands of dollars were paid to Taliban chiefs. Ishmayel said the deal was sealed in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul. France took control of the apparently low-risk area last year, where only one Italian had died in the previous year.      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...

ANI: Even as the Pakistan Army is all prepared and waits for a nod from the government to launch an all out offensive in South Waziristan, the Taliban’s stronghold, many inside the Canadian government who deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan issues are suspicious of Islamabad’s efforts. They believe that Pakistan’s Army and intelligence (the Inter Services Intelligence) are far more concerned with countering India, than taking on the real enemy, which poses an existential threat to the country itself.      Full news...

Reuters: An Afghan woman and a child were killed in a joint NATO-Afghan operation against insurgents in Afghanistan on Friday, sparking a protest by a group of angry villagers.... "House searches, killings and beatings of civilians have become daily business," said one villager.      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...