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...

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...