Global Research: An average of 18 US military veterans are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides driven by Washington’s wars of aggression. The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times, citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Civilian casualties are rising in Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO reinforcements stream into the country as part of a military buildup to combat the resurgent Taliban, the Interior Ministry said Sunday. There have been 173 civilian deaths in violence in Afghanistan from March 21 to April 21, marking a 33 percent increase over the same time period last year, the ministry said.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: What to do with Afghanistan? Despite President Obama's 30,000 strong troop surge and millions of dollars being poured in, the Afghan bus has not managed to extricate itself from the ditch it has been stuck in. The Pentagon's report to Congress yesterday underlines what most people already know: the population "sympathizes with or supports the Afghan government" in only 24% of the key parts of Afghanistan.      Full news...

AFP: INTERNATIONAL troops opened fire on a car in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing two women and a girl after mistaking them for Taleban, the Afghan interior ministry said. The victims were among five civilians who were travelling on a highway in Zabul province when they came under fire, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.      Full news...

WSWS.org: The Times reported that “more than a dozen military and civilian officials directly involved in the Kandahar offensive” had agreed to speak about the special forces’ activities because it would help “scare off insurgents” before the bulk of American troops move into Taliban-held areas of the city. This claim is either patent nonsense or deliberate deception. The Taliban do not require an article in the American media to inform them that “large numbers” of their fighters are being killed or captured.      Full news...

AOL News: For girls in Afghanistan, getting an education has always been difficult, if not impossible. But their struggle appears worse than ever recently as a series of poison gas attacks on girls' schools has sent at least 88 girls, some as young as 7, to the hospital. The attacks in Kunduz province, in the north of the country, come amid heightened Taliban influence in the region, raising fears that ultra-conservative elements in society are becoming bolder in their efforts to exert influence over social behavior.      Full news...

Morning Star: Britain has long known that Afghanistan is accused of using torture but is still handing over prisoners, new evidence in a legal action against the British government claims. Peace campaigner Maya Evans is bringing a judicial review against the Defence Secretary over allegations that British troops were complicit in the torture of Afghan prisoners by handing them over to the notorious Afghan Security Service (NDS).      Full news...

Toronto Star: After all that has happened in Afghanistan, all the innocents that have been murdered, villages destroyed, women kidnapped and sold into the sex trade, little boys and girls getting kidnapped and also sold into the sex trade, people like Allan Woods are still trying to convince us that we Canadians are fighting a just war.      Full news...

PAN: Around 1,000 people Sunday poured onto the streets against the killing of three members of a family in a coalition operation in the central province of Logar, the second demonstration against US troops in two days. The angry residents, chanting slogans against the United States and the provincial administration, blocked the Logar-Gardez highway in the Nasir village near Pul-i-Alam and burnt 16 tankers carrying fuel for NATO-led forces.      Full news...

The Gazette: The roadside bombs of Afghanistan are brutal and destructive, though the injuries they cause, both in brain and body, can be subtle. Since 2003, the Taliban's consistent use of such explosives has killed 84 of Canada's 142 fallen soldiers, and has made amputees of many others. Often, the bombs tear apart soldiers and local Afghans alike. They have been known to lift 70-tonne tanks off the ground.      Full news...

PAN: Hundreds of angry residents took to the streets against the killing of five civilians in a predawn US-led coalition operation in the central province of Logar on Friday. But the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) called the dead militants, who were shot dead in a fierce gunbattle with the combined force. Also, two US service members died of wounds suffered in the firefight.      Full news...

OpedNews.com: As all wars are not morally objectionable, not all wars are permissible. However, even in the situation where use of force becomes permissible, there are certain essential and universally accepted principles that need to be abided... Judging from the above principles, the eight-year-old US war against Afghanistan trampled every accepted norms and standard conduct of war; a war bereft of reason and uncalled for.      Full news...

The Guardian: As with so many of the Helmand towns where the British are present the bazaar in Sangin is officially "thriving". Indeed, recent visitors have to admit that there are signs of commerce in the long thin strip of shops. But the rest, says David Gill, a photographer who visited Sangin three times last year, is like "a ghost town in Death Valley where you drive through and all you see is a sign flapping in the wind".      Full news...

Asia Times: On his first day in office, President Barack Obama promised that he would close the George W Bush-era prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "as soon as practicable" and "no later than one year from the date of this order". The announcement was met with relief, even joy, by those, like me, who had opposed the very existence of Guantanamo on the grounds that it represented a legal black hole where the distinction between guilt and innocence had been obliterated, respect for the rule of law was mocked, and the rights of prisoners were dismissed out of hand. We should have known better.      Full news...

RAWA News: The figures cited by McChrystal suggest a large increase (though very small absolute numbers) of civilians killed by NATO actions, when in fact the level of deaths has remained stable. Secondly, the NATO figures are gross, “fantasy” undercounts, e.g., during the first three months of 2010 they captured at most 39% of the actual deaths. Interestingly, the NATO figures for 2010 and the UNAMA ones for the year 2009 reveal the same magnitude (@ 60%) of undercounting.      Full news...

DPA: Afghan officials said Tuesday that NATO forces shot dead four Afghan school students, but NATO said those killed were Taliban militants and their associates. The incident happened around three kilometres south of Khost city, the capital of the south-eastern province of Khost, on Monday night, Mubarez Mohammad Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor, told the German Press Agency dpa.      Full news...

Veterans Today Network: As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple “drum beating” for an Israeli attack in Iran to get at the gas supplies needed for her secret pipeline deals, her “shill” in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is simply no longer credible.      Full news...

Telegraph: Government denials of such abuse are the result of a "head in the sand" attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. They are the latest allegations of British complicity in torture following investigations into MI5 and MI6. Human rights lawyers have assembled details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, electrocution, and whipping with rubber cables.      Full news...

FOX News: In recent weeks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s anti-western behavior has become well known to even the most casual observers of Afghanistan. First, he stood next to, and appeared to agree with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian President called America and its international allies fighting in Afghanistan “occupiers.” Days later, Karzai told supporters in a closed door meeting he might consider joining the Taliban if his western partners didn’t stop pushing him to clean up government corruption and interfering in Afghan affairs.      Full news...

The Associated Press: With a U.S.-led offensive only weeks away to clear the Taliban from this key southerncity, many residents blame foreign troops and the Afghan government as much as the Taliban for pushing Kandahar toward the brink of chaos - the very thing the military hopes to reverse. The goal of the operation by U.S., NATO and Afghanforces is to shore up a local administration that nominally controls the city and break the grip of warlords and influence peddlers, who are thought to have allowed the Taliban in.      Full news...

Winnipeg Free Press: The system by which Afghans and their families are compensated if they are injured in an American military attack has increasingly become a source of outrage among Afghans who say they feel a price is being put on their lives. The practice has come under particular criticism since the major U.S. offensive in Helmand province.      Full news...

Toronto Star: Did Canadian troops use Afghanistan’s notorious security services as “subcontractors for abuse and torture?” That’s what the Commons committee on Afghanistan heard this week from Ahmadshah Malgarai, an Afghan-Canadian who worked as an interpreter in Kandahar. “If the (Canadian) interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to NDS (the National Directorate of Security) for more questions, Afghan style,” Malgarai told the committee Wednesday.      Full news...

The Express Tribune: The US is improvising its policy in Afghanistan based on this review and on Obama’s subsequent policy interventions, including the commitment to increase the force level in Afghanistan by another 60,000 troops during 2010. Despite these changes no major improvement has occurred in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban have become more aggressive and are stronger than before.      Full news...

The Globe and Mail: U.S. troops fired on a crowded passenger bus on the outskirts of Kandahar city, killing four civilians and injuring 18 others, stoking anti-American protests that promised to complicate a massive offensive against Taliban insurgents this summer. Although the military command issued an apology, saying it “deeply regrets the tragic loss of life,” Monday’s incident cast fresh doubts on Operation Omid, billed as the pivotal offensive of the war, which will see tens of thousands of NATO troops attempt to seize control of Kandahar.      Full news...

Reuters: Foreign forces opened fire on a bus in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four civilians and wounding 18 others, a provincial official said. The issue of civilian casualties caused by international forces is an emotive one in Afghanistan and undermines support for their presence in the country.      Full news...

The Guardian: A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today. The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security.      Full news...

The Times: US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.      Full news...

CBC News: German troops have admitted they accidentally killed six Afghan soldiers during a gunfight with what they thought were Taliban insurgents, the Afghan army said Saturday. Three Germans died in the incident Friday in northern Kunduz province. German soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier opened fire after coming across two civilian vehicles that refused to stop.      Full news...

RAWA News: Another year another peace rally. The wars rage on, and the struggle continues. Like at all the others, I felt inwardly horrified. A billion wailing voices echoed in my mind. On we go with this tragedy of intention and this comedy of errors while the bodies pile higher. I long to take the needle off this skipping record and rest it on my broken heart. There alone can truth be sourced. A mind is too easily corrupted.      Full news...

RAWA News: Examining a microcosm can shed light on the larger reality. I have chosen to analyze a small mountain hamlet, Chagoti Ghar (Chergotah), located some forty kilometers east of Khost city in eastern Afghanistan in a time frame separated by eight and a third years – November 23rd 2001 and March 24th 2010. Both times, two Afghan civilians perished as a result of foreign occupation fire. In both instances, the U.S corporate media was silent. Both times, to pierce the veil of silence spun by the American military industrial media information complex (MIMIC) a person had to turn to independent, regional media; in November 2001 to the Peshawar-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency and in March 2010, to the Kabul-based Pajhwok Afghan News.      Full news...