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...

The Sydney Morning Herald: Long before the Nobel Peace Prize was debased and trivialised into an episode of American Idol, the failure beneath the soaring rhetoric of Barack Obama had been exposed. Even the secretary of the Nobel committee sheepishly admitted on Friday: ''Nominations for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize closed just 11 days after he [Obama] took office.'' Since then, the US President has knowingly propped up a corrupt and violent regime in Afghanistan led by a lying fraud. He has achieved nothing to prevent the continued building of Israeli settlements on the Palestinian West Bank.      Full news...

The Des Moines Register: On Saturday, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made a visit to Clive, flanked by a phalanx of U.S.-government supplied secret servicemen. In a lavish private reception, a senator, congressman and former governor welcomed the former military general, who seized power in a 1999 coup and resigned under pressure last year. On Tuesday, with no security forces in tow, a young Afghan woman who goes by the pseudonym Zoya slipped into Des Moines to speak at a public library.      Full news...

The Washington Post: It was a scene repeated countless times during the Bush years: A few hundred people massed on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, holding photos of wounded children or carrying coffins. They chanted antiwar slogans, acted out waterboarding and pretended to die on the sidewalk. Those who refused orders to leave the area -- including ubiquitous activist Cindy Sheehan -- were arrested.      Full news...

AKI: Two Afghan civilians were killed and two others were injured in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika on Thursday when a bomb exploded at a wedding party, according to a provincial official. The official said the blast occurred at a wedding party in Paktika's Argun district, the spokesman was quoted as saying.      Full news...

AGI: Six children and three women were killed during a NATO air raid in the province of Helmand, southern Afghanistan. The new accidental killing of civilians was reported by Daud Ahmadi, spokesperson of the provincial governor. The raid, which claimed the life of 4 armed Taliban, was ordered as a reply to an attack against a convoy of NATO and Afghan forces in a village located in the Nad Ali district.      Full news...

OpEdNews: After eight long years, the so-called “good war” in Afghanistan has become the “unpopular and high cost war”—and it is becoming a quagmire.General Stanley McChrystal recently requested an additional 45,000 troops for Afghanistan, on top of the 21,000 additional troops sent earlier this year. If honored, this request would bring the total number of troops stationed in Afghanistan to approximately 100,000. Even that large number would be less than what the non-public portion of the McChrystal report states as necessary to “win” the war – 500,000 troops.      Full news...

AFP: A young Afghan girl died after a box of public information leaflets, dropped by a Royal Air Force plane over Afghanistan, landed on her, a newspaper said Wednesday. The Ministry of Defence said it was investigating the accident which it described as "highly regrettable," The Times said. The drop occurred over a rural area of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on June 23 as part of an information campaign, the newspaper said.      Full news...

GlobalPost: The Afghan election results are finally in and, to no one's surprise, they have inflamed a crisis of credibility. Afghanistan’s latest effort in democracy was marred by widespread fraud, violence, and intimidation. The U.N.-backed Independent Election Commission awarded President Hamid Karzai 54.6 percent of the vote, putting him over the critical 50 percent necessary to secure victory without a runoff. Experts estimate it will take the U.S. at least 12 to 18 months for signs of progress to show. Now, half of that time will be spent under a cloud of illegitimacy even if Karzai wins reelection.      Full news...

PTI: Parts of ISI are supporting Taliban and protecting their chief Mullah Omar and other militant leaders in Pakistan's Quetta city, where US officials have discussed sending commandos to capture or kill the terrorists, a media report said on Sunday. The US is threatening to launch air strikes against Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan, 'The Sunday Times' reported.      Full news...

PAN: US forces shot dead a schoolboy on his way home in the southeastern province of Paktika on Monday, the victim's father said. Ghulam Shah, father of the 13-year-old Zeeshan, told Pajhwok Afghan News his son was returning home on a bicycle from school. He alleged NATO-led soldiers opened fire on the boy in Madatkhel area on the outskirts of Sharan, the provincial capital.      Full news...

Reuters: Seventeen-year-old Nowruz was celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid with his father, mother and 11-year-old sister when 50 Taliban gunmen attacked their home with rockets and gunfire and killed him. The Taliban's target on Tuesday night was Nowruz's father Esmatullah, a police commander whose job had obliged him to move his family to the mainly Pashtun Guzara district of western Afghanistan's mainly stable Herat province.      Full news...

PAN: Six people were killed and several others wounded in an air strike by foreign forces in Arghandab district of the volatile southern Kandahar province, residents said Thursday. The air raid was conducted late Wednesday night in Nagahan area that lasted one hour, according to residents, who had brought their injured relatives to the Mirwais Civil Hospital in Kandahar City.      Full news...

PAN (translated by RAWA): Eight civilians are killed and four others wounded in the air strike by foreign troops, a number of residents from the Marja district of Helmand province are claiming... Another resident named Norullah from the same district told PAN that there were no Taliban near this village but the armed Taliban from the nearby village had fired on helicopters.      Full news...

The Age: THE US scarcely knew what a complex disaster it was confronting when it went to war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. It will eventually - perhaps years from now - suffer the same fate as Alexander the Great, the British and the Soviet Union: defeat. What is called ''Afghanistan'' is really a collection of tribes and ethnic groups - Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and more. There are seven major ethnic groups, each with its own language.      Full news...

CounterPunch: I want the women of Afghanistan to be liberated. Do I have to support the war? Short answer: No. In fact, supporting the war only works against their liberation. If you can’t stand the idea of The Handmaid’s Tale come to life; set in a dusty, third world country and despise the thought of women being kept out of schools and in large respects the outright chattel property of their fathers or husbands, then in fact you must      Full news...

FT.com: Nato forces are losing ground against the insurgency in Afghanistan. Afghans look as though they will continue to be led by a corrupt and warlord-influenced government, of doubtful legitimacy after the flawed and still inconclusive recent elections. As casualties mount and spread, a backlash is building in allied countries against a war their citizens increasingly see as both pointless and doomed.      Full news...

IWPR: A year after her family died in an airstrike, a young girl still lives in the same village, alone and constantly in fear. Seven-year-old Zahra looks like a typical Afghan girl in her traditional long dress and scarf, her short black hair peeking out from her head covering. On the night of August 22 2008, all of Zahra’s immediate family was killed by American bombs. In pursuit of Taleban commander Mullah Siddiq, United States Special Forces and the Afghan army launched an airstrike on the village of Azizabad in Shindand district of Herat. An investigation by the United Nations said that 90 people, 60 children and 30 adults, died.      Full news...

The Christian Science Monitor: A retaliatory NATO airstrike that killed scores of civilians. The kidnapping of New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell. The deadly shooting of his Afghan translator and the death of a British soldier in a violent and controversial rescue operation days later.The events of this week have drawn attention to the unraveling security in northern Afghanistan in a way months of the creeping insurgency had not. Long considered one of the most stable and peaceful parts of the country, the northern provinces have seen rising violence as heavy insurgent activity has spread to 80 percent of the country – up from 54 percent two years ago.      Full news...

The Independent: Edward Stourton's last day on the Today prog had him appropriately serious-voiced about Operation Panther's Claw, which has been very heavy on the troops in Helmand. The BBC's man in Afghanistan said that while just over 4,300 votes for that popinjay Karzai had been counted in Babaji, a local election observer claimed that only 15 people had turned up. Ed left his listeners in no doubt that 10 British soldiers had sacrificed their lives for this grand-scale piece of electoral fraudulence.      Full news...

The Independent: The military raid to free the British-Irish journalist Stephen Farrell from his Taliban captors was successful in the narrowest possible sense. The rescuers got Mr Farrell out of the hands of his kidnappers in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan. Two Afghan civilians are said to have died in the operation. And Mr Farrell's Afghan interpreter, Sultan Munadi, was shot dead, quite possibly by Nato forces.      Full news...

RAWA News: The magic cut-off is revealed to be about 30-40. Such revealed facts tell far more than mere words.... In the past few years, U.S. officialdom and the mainstream press barely take note of dead Afghans unless the number exceeds thirty. On the other hand, when a Taliban’s improved explosive device kills innocent bystanders, meters of newsprint spews forth often accompanied with victims’ photos. For the U.S. press, Human Rights Watch, and U.S. citizenry clearly some bodies are worthy of mention whereas others are not.      Full news...

The Times: US troops stormed a hospital and tied up medical staff, in breach of international law, a Swedish charity has claimed. Soldiers from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division made an armed raid last Wednesday on the clinic, in eastern Afghanistan, to search for insurgents, Anders F?nge, the director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, said. “This is a clear violation of internationally recognised rules and principles,” he said.      Full news...

The Guardian: The stooped and withdrawn 18-year-old breathed painfully as he relived the day last month when shrapnel from a missile ripped through his lung and bowels. "I was just a few steps outside my front gate when about eight rockets landed," he says, sitting in a hospital in the provincial capital of Helmand, bandages around his chest. "I was hit and ran into the house where women and children were yelling because a rocket had also landed on one of the rooms."      Full news...

Mirror.co.uk: A traumatised soldier who saw one of his friends die in Afghanistan says he was told by Army bosses to "get p****d and have a fight" to get over it. Sapper Martin Lindley, 22, says it showed the Army's lack of support as he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. Eventually he was kicked out of the Army after going off the rails. And he has not been able to get a job as he drinks a litre of vodka a night to block out his memories of the war in Afghanistan.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of Chahar Dara district in northern Kunduz province say more than 150 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in Friday's air strike by NATO-led forces. The bombing in Haji Aman village came as insurgents and residents emptied oil into jerry canes from tankers hijacked by Taliban militants from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway. Inhabitants of the area told Pajhwok Afghan News all those killed in the bombardment were civilians and there were no Taliban at the site at the time the attack took place.      Full news...

Washington Post: One week after Afghanistan's presidential election, with the winner still undeclared, increasing accusations of fraud and voter coercion threaten to undermine the validity of the results, deepen dangerous regional divisions and hamper the Obama administration's goals in this volatile country.... "I was a witness to fraud, and I couldn't do anything to stop it," said a female election monitor at a voting site...      Full news...

RAWA News: Buried in the public relations blather of U.S. Marine legions “liberating” Helmand and Afghan (sham) “elections” as democracy-restored is an unspoken trade-off over who disproportionately dies in America’s modern wars in the Third World. Under George W. Bush, U.S politico-military elites chose to fight the Afghan war with minimal regard for so-called collateral casualties. But the soaring toll of killed Afghan civilians swayed world public opinion and stoked the Afghan resistance as grieved Afghan family members sought revenge.      Full news...

The Independent: Like millions of Afghans, I have no hope in the results of today's election. In a country ruled by warlords, occupation forces, Taliban terrorists, drug money and guns, no one can expect a legitimate or fair vote. Even international observers have been speaking about widespread fraud and intimidation and, among the people on the street, there is a common refrain: the real winner has already been picked by the White House.      Full news...

Politics.co.uk: The legitimacy of this week's crucial Afghanistan elections has been called into question, after the full price Britain's soldiers are paying to provide security for the poll was revealed yesterday. It emerged this morning that bribes have been offered to buy votes and that voting cards have been put up for sale. An undercover Afghan journalist working for the BBC discovered he could purchase voting cards at £6 per card.      Full news...