The independent: Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.      Full news...

Reuters: Nine police and two civilians were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, a provincial doctor said on Thursday, but the coalition said Taliban fighters had been killed.      Full news...

Global Research: Soldiers of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have repeatedly used Afghan children to detect land-mines in war-ravaged country, said a former German ISAF officer in Berlin on Thursday.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The intensity of fighting in Afghanistan is laid bare today in new figures which reveal that almost four million bullets have been fired by British Forces in less than a year - almost double the number previously reported.      Full news...

New Statesman: The US and Britain claim defeating the Taliban is part of a "good war" against al-Qaeda. Yet there is evidence the 2001 invasion was planned before 9/11. "To me, I confess, [countries] are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for dominion of the world."      Full news...

WorldNetDaily: GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain knocked President Bush for failing to capture Osama bin Laden despite "opportunities over the past six years, and vowed to "get" the terrorist kingpin if voters put him in the White House.      Full news...

Press TV: Afghan president appoints an important Taliban commander as the new governor of Musa Qala district in the north of Helmand province. Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, appointed Mullah Abdul Salam the new governor of Musa Qala on Monday, IRNA quoted Helmand Governor General, Assadullah Wafa as saying.      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan's opium production was likely to boom in 2008, the top NATO commander said Wednesday, and predicted continued Taliban-led violence, which he linked to the illicit drug trade.      Full news...

The Guardian: I bought The Kite Runner in the hope that it might provide some insights into Afghanistan, one of the many areas of the world about which much is said through the lens of the powerful, but little is seen of the actualities of the everyday lives of the people. What I read was anything but.      Full news...

ION: A man in his thirties suddenly threw himself on a busy road in Kabul and yelled, “kill me and drive over me. They can’t feed us; the easier way is to kill me and my children. Oh people, for God's sake, come and kill us,” shouted the apparently exhausted man lamenting the government's failure to provide him with a livelihood.      Full news...

BBC News: After two years in which the violence in Afghanistan has become worse, it is hard to see signs of hope in 2008. The detailed new international commitments, and promises of more money, put forward at the London Conference in January 2006, made little headway as the war against the Taliban went into a new phase.      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan has ordered a top European Union official and a United Nations staffer to leave the country for threatening national security, government and diplomatic officials said.      Full news...

The Telegraph: Agents from MI6 entered secret talks with Taliban leaders despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.      Full news...

The CorpWatch: In September, on a tree-lined street in the most expensive neighborhood in Kabul, dozens of men rolled out of armored vehicles in front of a little-known U.S. security company. Backed up by Blackwater guards, Afghan authorities and Americans from the FBI and the U.S. State Department quickly headed for the offices of United States Protection and Investigations (USPI). Once inside, they arrested four of the Texas-based company's management team and confiscated 15 computers. The two Americans arrested were later released, while the Afghan managers remain in custody.      Full news...

AntiWar.com: Hamid Karzai is the grandson of Khair Mohammed of the village of Karz, not far from Kandahar. He was an indigent member of the Popalzai tribe with a large family who migrated to Kandahar seeking a better life. Normally, when a Pashtun is of noble stock he's known by a patronym, but more humble tribal members do not have that privilege. Therefore, perforce they resort to descriptive names like Karzai, Pashto for "born in Karz."      Full news...

RAWA: But now through Australian media were informed that Sayad Anwar Shah and Sayed Zubair, both cousins of the well-known Afghan criminal Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf (fundamentalist leader of Itehad-e-Islami Party and currently member of the Afghan parliament), were running a religious school in Australia. But according to a recent news item in Australian papers, the director has been charged with fraud over the alleged theft of $355,934 from the college's federal funding.      Full news...

Linchpin (Issue One): Afghanistan has been a primary focus of the so called War on Terror since the events of September 11th and as a result, the already fractured society has been pushed even deeper into chaos, destruction and violence.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The British Army says it is "taking seriously" claims that children were shot and several adult villagers had their throats cut during a secret military operation by unidentified forces in Helmand province.      Full news...

IWPR: Residents of a southern village tell of a night of violence at the hands of foreign and Afghan soldiers. Abdul Manaan claims he suffered slashes to his neck during a nighttime raid which locals say was carried out by a mixed force of foreign and Afghan troops helicoptered into Toube on November 18. Eyewitnesses say the soldiers killed 18 civilians in an attack that was brutal even by the standards of the Afghan conflict.      Full news...

Daily Mail: Shown together for the first time, this is Osama Bin Laden and the son who rejected his terror creed and went on to marry an English parish councillor. Omar Bin Laden, now 26, was just 15 when he was pictured with the father he describes as gentle and kind, with a love of football and a great sense of humour.      Full news...

Pajhwak Afghan News: Residents of Wazikhwa district of the Pakthika province live in constant fear of being struck by Taliban insurgents. "Visiting this area is not without risk," says Khair Mohammad, an elderly person, standing by a deserted shop.      Full news...

BBC News: Digging into what the latest opinion poll really means, security still came out as the main concern, but of those polled who said things were moving in the wrong direction, the economy was at the top of their list.      Full news...

By Marc W. Herold: Thought and language, which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, are the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of human consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness...      Full news...

OneWorld: US war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq.      Full news...

PoliticalAffairs.net: A spate of recent news reports indicates that the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is becoming a deeper disaster. It has been revealed that many victims of the Nov. 6 bombing in northern Baghlan province were children shot by government bodyguards. About 77 people died (including four members of the Afghan parliament), and another 100 were injured. According to an internal United Nations security report obtained on Nov. 19, bodyguards for the politicians shot at least 100 rounds of gunfire "deliberately and indiscriminately" into the crowd after the suicide bombing, and that schoolchildren bore "the brunt of the onslaught at close range."      Full news...

AFP: International war planes going after insurgents in northeastern Afghanistan struck a road construction camp and killed 14 workers, leaving many unrecognisable, officials said Wednesday.      Full news...

Reuters: Too much aid to Afghanistan is wasted -- soaked up in contractors' profits, spent on expensive expatriate consultants or squandered on small-scale, quick-fix projects, a leading British charity said on Tuesday. Despite more than $15 billion of aid pumped into Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, many Afghans still suffer levels of poverty rarely seen outside sub-Saharan Africa.      Full news...

The Ottawa Citizen: The Defence Department is keeping secret the names of dozens of companies that received almost $42 million worth of contracts in Afghanistan. However, an analysis by CanWest News Service suggests that more than $1.1 million in business has been awarded to an Afghan company that bears the same name as one of Kandahar's most infamous warlords.      Full news...

The Herald Sun: THE US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS. At least 6256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 - an average of 17 a day - the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.      Full news...

Associated Press: The Veterans Affairs Department is ramping up its suicide prevention programs. The VA has determined there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the Afghan war and the end of 2005.      Full news...