AFP: The Afghan government has suspended two Christian aid groups after a TV show reported they were proselytising, which is illegal in the devoutly Islamic country. Converting from Islam to another religion is punishable by death under Afghan law. The Afghan constitution is based on traditional sharia law, which strictly bans religious conversion. In parliament, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a deputy of the lower house, called for Muslim converts to Christianity to be executed.      Full news...

PAN: Afghans are calling for the removal of some candidates from a list of those standing in September’s parliamentary elections for being “violators of human rights”. Several people have come forward to say that allowing criminals or those who violate human rights to stand for parliament undermines the legitimacy of a democratic election.      Full news...

AFP: As President Hamid Karzai prepares to host a peace conference later this month to discuss how to tackle the brutal Taliban insurgency, victims of the violence blighting Afghanistan complain their voice is not being heard. “I want peace in my country, but peace will only be possible if those who have brought death to our country are tried,” said Attayii, one of dozens of people who gathered at a mass grave on the outskirts of Kabul this week.      Full news...

The Media Line: The Muslim world is full of violent, graphic and alarming stories of “honor killings”, in which young woman are killed by male family members for dishonoring the family. “Honor rape”, in which the gang rape of a woman is used as a tool of social punishment, is spoken of less. Almost unheard of is an “honor killing” or “honor rape” of a man.      Full news...

The Guardian: Some Muslims are fond of condemning western morality – alcoholism, nudity, premarital sex and homosexuality often being cited as examples. But Muslims do not have a monopoly on morality. In the west, child marriages and sex with children are illegal. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Muslim countries. I recently saw the documentary on the Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.      Full news...

In late 2001, after helping kick the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan, two militias allied with the United States raped and plundered their way through your villages. One was the ethnic Uzbek militia of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; the other was made up of ethnic Hazara followers of the warlord Muhammad Mohaqiq. They killed your men, slaughtered and stole your livestock, pillaged your homes, and violated your sisters, mothers, and daughters. Some of them took the time to explain why they had picked you as their victims: Because you are Pashtun, the ethnic group that made up most of the Taliban.      Full news...

UN Dispatch: During the first half of Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990’s, Hekmatyar’s forces committed atrocities that elsewhere in the world are met with international arrest warrants and indictments for war crimes and crimes against humanity –not hints of future inclusion in government.      Full news...

Reuters: The United Nations urged Afghanistan on Thursday to repeal a law that grants a blanket pardon for perpetrators of war crimes and rights abuses, saying the law could hamper efforts to make peace. Afghan and international human rights groups expressed alarm earlier this month at the law, which appeared to have been enacted unannounced and gives immunity to all members of armed factions for acts committed before the Taliban’s ouster in 2001.      Full news...

RT.com: Afghanistan’s unique location has made it home to the world's most complex civilizations that left a rich cultural heritage. But the war-torn country has now fallen victim to looters, stealing the nation’s artifacts. Ever since Afghanistan was invaded by Alexander the Great, nearly 2,500 years ago, the country has seen one foreign army after another. In recent times – the British, the Soviets – and now the Americans ...      Full news...

AFP: Afghan women may hold a quarter of the seats in their country's parliament but many are mere mouthpieces for warlords, who continue to set the legislative agenda, an Afghan women's rights activist said. "Today we have 68 women in the parliament, 25 percent... We have a group of women high in quantity, but low in quality," Voice of Women director Suraya Pakzad told a meeting in the US Congress to mark International Women's Day.      Full news...

The Australian: Hekmatyar is being feted with offers that reportedly include ministries and governorships for his party, Hezb-e-Islami, in a future Afghan regime. The devils with whom Kabul and Washington must now deal are largely of America's own making, assisted by its long-time ally, Pakistan. During the US-backed jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Hekmatyar led one of seven mujaheddin parties that were lavishly bankrolled by the CIA.      Full news...

ABC News: Sexual slavery involving boys as young as 10 is being condoned and in many cases protected by authorities in northern Afghanistan. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi has filmed police attending a party where a young boy is the "entertainment". The police shown on the video include one officer from the youth crime squad. Such parties are illegal under Afghanistan law and with good reason.      Full news...

RAWA News: According to reports by Afghan media, ordered by a local warlord called Fazl Ahad, two Afghan women were publicly flogged in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan. Spokesman of Ghor’s Governor, Abdul Hai Khatibi said these women were forcibly married in Dolina district, but later they both ran away from their husbands' houses. Police in Heart arrested the two and returned them to their village and handed over to their husbands.      Full news...

The Guardian: Taliban fighters who have maimed and murdered but who lay down their weapons will be given immunity from prosecution according to a law that came into force without announcement in the weeks running up to last month's London conference on Afghanistan. The reconciliation and general amnesty law also gives immunity from prosecution to all of the country's warlords, the former factional leaders, many of whom are hated for the atrocities they committed during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The police say that they have arrested a Mullah Imam (a religious cleric who leads the prayers) in connection with the rape of two women in the Imam Sahib District of Kunduz Province. Police chief of Imam Sahib District, Abdul Qayum Ibrahimi stated the culprit’s name as Mullah Rahmatullah and told PAN that he was an Imam in the mosque of the Baika village and had been arrested two days back as he thought to be involved in the rape of two women.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: One thing that remains consistent over the last 30 years in observing America's participation in Afghanistan is that mistakes and errors of judgment, no matter how egregious or self-defeating, never seem to get corrected. In fact, in its effort to rationalize a growing culture of war-making from Vietnam to Afghanistan, America has come around to embracing the insanity of the fictional Colonel Kurtz.      Full news...

The Boston Globe: While the White House has paid lip service to the importance of good governance in Afghanistan, the reality is that co-opting violent warlords is at the heart of a plan that will likely result in further instability. One of the warlords who may soon star in the new US efforts to rebrand fundamentalists as potential government partners is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal Afghan insurgent commander...      Full news...

BBC: The UK paid $2m (£1.3m) for the services of an Afghan warlord in an operation against Osama Bin Laden in 2001, it has been alleged. BBC Two's Conspiracy Files heard claims from a US special forces commander that both the Americans and British paid substantial sums to Afghan warlords. Dalton Fury added that the UK-backed warlord, Haji Zaman Gamsurek, went on to agree a ceasefire with al-Qaeda.      Full news...

PAN: The outgoing year was the deadliest year for Afghan children since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001, a human rights watchdog said here on Wednesday. More than 1,050 children under 18 years of age were killed in suicide attacks, air strikes, improvised explosive device blasts and crossfire between warring parties in 2009, the organisation said.      Full news...

IWPR: Baz Mohammad, a shopkeeper in the Charbolak district of Balkh province, is a worried man. Security in this formerly stable province is becoming increasingly fragile, and he is concerned that fighting could break out.... Balkh has become more and more unstable since the results of the elections were announced in October. Karzai was declared the winner, and Atta’s position has come under question.      Full news...

Toronto Star: A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn't defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government. The revelation about Asadullah Khalid opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.      Full news...

Global Research: These military forces will not be going to Afghanistan to set up vaccination programs or conduct literacy classes for Afghan girls. They are going there as part of the most destructive military machine on the planet, to wreak violence. The military machine that has bombed wedding parties, that has held thousands of young Afghan men in Bagram prison without charges, that kicks down doors in the middle of the night—this machine is being strengthened and further unleashed.      Full news...

PAN: Sixty civilians were killed and 102 others wounded in various violence-related incidents over the past one week, the Ministry of Interior has said. Most of the civilian casualties occurred in volatile southern provinces of Ghazni, Helmand and Kandahar as a result of roadside bombs, rocket attacks, ambushes and suicide attacks, the ministry added.      Full news...

IRIN: Over two million Afghans have been killed or wounded in armed conflicts and violence over the past three decades but the desire for peace and stability has always been strong, nine NGOs say in a report published today. “A whole generation has grown up never having experienced peace and many Afghans are struggling to cope with the psychological, economic, social and physical ramifications of the conflict, past and present,” says the report entitled The Cost of War, Afghan Experiences of Conflict, 1978-2009.      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...

Quqnoos: The sixth-grade schoolchild who has been working part time at a tailoring shop in Baghlan-e Markazi district told Quqnoos that nephew of the district governor, Amir Gul, kidnapped and raped him nearly two weeks ago. “They took me and fasten my mouth, eyes and feet and then did the thing to me,” the boy, Ahmad, (not his real name) described. “I went to governor with my letter, he took me to a private room and said that this [the rape] issue can be resolved in gathering with elders, not the government, so don’t disgrace me,” Ahmad’s father described the behavior of the governor.      Full news...

The New York Times: After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations. “At the White House, nobody said ‘no’ to an investigation, but nobody ever said ‘yes,’ either,” said Pierre Prosper, the former war crimes ambassador for the United States. “The first reaction of everybody there was ‘Oh, this is a sensitive issue. This is a touchy issue politically.’”      Full news...

Windsor Star: Afghan women - particularly in the volatile south, where the Taliban was born - rarely appear in public without burkas and often show deference to the opposite sex, lowering gazes to the floor, almost shrinking when a man approaches. Given that some hard-line Islamists believe the Koran decrees women to be subservient to men, improving conditions for women in a war-torn country with one of the world's lowest literacy levels requires more than education. It requires social engineering.      Full news...

IWPR: Khadija Ahadi used to be the most active journalism student in town. At press conferences in Herat, she would always be there with her video camera, usually the only woman in the room. Nobody was surprised that she landed a job as the deputy editor-in-chief of Radio Faryad after her studies. But now her successful career has suddenly been stopped – by force. “Some men threatened me because I am a reporter, but initially I kept working and I didn’t tell my family because they would have stopped me,” said Ahadi, 32. “Then one day they threw two grenades in my house. I have not gone to work since.’’      Full news...

The National: Juma Gul’s muffled crying became noticeable only when she wiped the tears away using her burqa or slumped forward with her head in her hands. Speaking Uzbek, she described how she made the equivalent of about Dh440 by selling her baby daughter off for marriage. The girl’s fianc? had memorised the Quran and his father promised that her virginity would be respected until she was an adult. The couple eventually wed four years ago, when she was eight and he was in his late twenties.      Full news...