Reuters: Male tailors in an Afghan province have been barred from measuring female clients for fittings following a new local ruling that resembles the restrictions the ultra-conservative Taliban imposed on the country when in power.      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...

AFP: Afghanistan's Islamic clerics have called on President Hamid Karzai to clamp down on a burgeoning television industry which it accused of spreading "immorality and unIslamic culture." The call was made during a meeting between Karzai and dozens of clerics from an influential religious council in Kabul on Friday, an official in Karzai's office told AFP under condition of anonymity on Saturday.      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...

IRIN News: Children are being recruited and in some cases sexually abused by the Afghan police and/or various militias that support the police, as well as by private security companies and the Taliban, according to human rights and provincial officials.      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: Journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi says his brother Parwez has been jailed and threatened with death because of his own reporting on human rights violations in the north.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Some 200 former Mujahideen commanders from the northeastern four provinces, in a meeting in Takhar province Thursday warned the government of dire consequences if they were not awarded their due place and rights.      Full news...

AFP: UN rights chief Louise Arbour criticised Afghanistan Tuesday for stalling on a plan to address atrocities and human rights abuses committed in its more than two decades of armed conflict.      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...

Reuters: They are known as "bacha bereesh," boys without beards, teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties in northern Afghanistan. It's an age old practice that has led to some of the boy dancers being turned into sex slaves by wealthy and powerful patrons, often former warlords, who dress the boys up as girls, shower them with gifts and keep them as "mistresses."      Full news...

The Associated Press: As many as two-thirds of the 77 people killed and 100 wounded in a suicide bombing Nov. 6 were hit by bullets from visiting lawmakers' panicked bodyguards, who fired into a crowd for as long as five minutes, a preliminary U.N. report says.      Full news...

CTV: As Afghan police scrambled to the scene of a bomb blast Tuesday that killed five lawmakers and dozens of children, Malalai Joya, haunted by death threats and assassination attempts in Afghanistan, sat on the other side of the world, clutching a cup of tea with her eyes cast downward.      Full news...

Associated Press: Two bomb blasts targeted a group of lawmakers in northern Afghanistan, on Tuesday, killing at least 64 people, including five members of parliament, the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, officials said.      Full news...

Eurasianet: Much of the world's attention on Afghanistan is now focused on the country's Pashtun-dominated south and east, where Taliban fighters are battling NATO troops and U.S.-led coalition forces. But there is a different kind of tension in northern Afghanistan.      Full news...

The Post: The killings of innocent people and human rights abuses in Afghanistan are being committed by war criminals and warlords since 20 years. After the Soviet withdrawal, these warlords and criminals killed thousands of people in Kabul and molested over 0.3 million women all over the country. These criminals have hijacked Afghanistan. According to a report on human rights, violence, political intimidation, and attacks on women are discouraging political participation and endangering gains made on women's rights in Afghanistan over the last year.      Full news...

The New York Times: Many former militia commanders and residents in northern Afghanistan have been hoarding illegal weapons in violation of the country's disarmament laws, giving the excuse that they face a spreading Taliban insurgency from the south that government forces alone are too frail to stop, Afghan and Western officials say.      Full news...

CounterTerrorism Blog: "As the speaker of Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga (the lower house of the National Assembly, the Afghan parliament) travels to the U.S. this week, there will be those who hail him as an example of how far democracy has come in this war-torn nation. Those people are wrong. Anyone with knowledge of Afghan politics knows Yunus Qanooni has been one of the biggest obstacles to success in this nascent democracy, more concerned with amassing power and lining the pockets of his warlord cronies than pushing for real change in Afghanistan. The most egregious example of Qanooni's true intentions came earlier this year, when he championed a bill to provide amnesty for anyone who has committed war crimes in the last 25 years.      Full news...

Pink News: Young boys are being sexually abused in Afghanistan in line with a tradition where they are bought by older men to dance at parties. The practice of "bacha baazi", meaning "boy-play", is enjoying a resurgence in the North of Afghanistan where ownership is seen as a status symbol by militia leaders according to Afghan news site, e-Ariana.      Full news...

IWPR: Panicked residents of Faryab province say a local warlord is exacting tribute and abusing civilians while the government does nothing to stop him. Shahabudin fled when life became intolerable for him in his native district of Pashtun Kot, in the northern Afghan province of Faryab. He claims that a former militia commander has taken over Pashtun Kot and is ruling virtually unchallenged.      Full news...

Institute for War & Peace Reporting: While attention focuses on fighting in southern Afghanistan, there are parts of the north where the law is made not by Kabul, but by militia commanders who use violence and intimidation to maintain their hold over the civilian population.      Full news...

The Herald Tribune: On the eve of his Camp David meeting with President George W. Bush, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan painted a bleak picture of life in his country, saying that the security situation had worsened and that the United States and its allies were no closer to catching Osama bin Laden than they were a few years ago.      Full news...

The Mail on Sunday: This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.      Full news...

Reuters: KABUL - Unidentified gunmen shot dead an Afghan woman journalist, the second such killing in less than a week, officials said on Wednesday. Zakia Zaki, who also served as headmistress of a school, ran a private radio station partially funded by a Western media group.      Full news...

World Socialist Web Site: The US-backed political elite in Kabul have recently made a series of judicial rulings with grave implications for democratic rights that has received little comment in the international media.      Full news...

The Independent: The most outspoken female MP in Afghanistan has been expelled from parliament after saying proceedings had descended to a level "worse than a zoo". The views of Malalai Joya, in a television interview, outraged fellow parliamentarians, who immediately voted to suspend her from the house for the rest of her five-year term. Some even demanded that she should be brought before a court for defamation and stripped of the right to stand again as a candidate.      Full news...

AFP: Taliban insurgents and armed Afghan groups are processing opium in makeshift laboratories to maximise drug profits and better fund the fight against Western forces, a top US drug official said on Monday.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: The war-era weapons were being smuggled from northern parts to the restive southern zone, said an official of the Disarmament of Irresponsible Armed Groups (DIAG) programme in Balkh on Sunday.      Full news...

Los Angeles Times: If there's one thing Abdul Rasul Sayyaf knows, it's how to guard an exposed flank.As one of many warlords battling for control of Kabul in the early 1990s, Sayyaf ordered his fighters to protect their positions and press for advantage — which they did by shelling civilian neighborhoods and slaughtering members of Afghanistan's oppressed ethnic Hazara minority, human rights groups say.      Full news...