The Guardian Weekly: Human rights are in crisis in Afghanistan, where fundamentalist warlords hold high office and child abuse and gang rapes are on the increase. When Malalai Joya, a young female Afghan politician, spoke out against the presence of 'war criminals' in the affairs of state, she was expelled from parliament among shouts of ‘whore’ and ‘communist’. The recipient of various international prizes for bravery, she speaks of her commitment to defend the rights of women and children despite numerous attempts on her life.      more...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Doctors of the central hospital of Uruzgan say that ISAF forces, without permission, shot photos of the female patients in the hospital and distributed expired medicines and biscuits. In reaction to these actions on November 26, the doctors of the central hospital went on a strike from treating the patients. Amir Ahmad, the head physician, told PAN that ISAF forces came to the hospital without permission went to the female section and took their photos. He added that taking women’s photos are again the Afghani customs and culture.      more...

Independent.co.uk: There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another – a 16-year-old – a leg. The black turbans are everywhere. So are the blue burkhas which we Westerners confidently – stupidly – believed would vanish from Afghan society.      more...

Spiegel Online: It's all too often that the US military accepts civilian casualties as a necessary evil. An internal Air Force report describes its excessively violent methods as well as how officials have been trying to placate surviving family members with money. There have been times when artillary shells have killed innocent civilians after landing several kilometers off-target. That is what happened in Paktika Province in the country's southeast on July 19. In other instances, such as that of last Monday -- as well as on July 6 and other previous occasions -- wedding parties have been misidentified as groups of insurgents -- with deadly consequences.      more...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Afghan education authorities say they are facing a difficult task of convincing parents to send their daughters to school as attacks on female students have increased in recent months. Three girls sustained severe burns in the southern town of Kandahar earlier in the week when unknown men sprayed acid on up to 15 girls. One of the girls might permanently lose her sight.      more...

BBC News: Attackers in Afghanistan have sprayed acid in the faces of at least 15 girls near a school in Kandahar, police say. They say the attack happened shortly before at least six people were killed in a bomb blast near a government building in the city.      more...

Los Angeles Times: The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that 37 civilians were killed and 35 injured during fighting last week in Kandahar province between insurgents and coalition forces. The finding came just three days after provincial officials and the Afghan president's office asserted that three dozen people had died in an errant U.S. airstrike on a wedding party in a village outside the city of Kandahar.      more...

CNN News: The U.S. military is investigating two airstrikes this week that Afghan officials say killed as many as 60 civilians. Many Afghans accuse the United States of not taking caution when carrying out airstrikes in civilian areas and Karzai has been under enormous political pressure to stop the strikes.      more...

ATN (Translated by RAWA): A 7-year old girl was raped by a young man in Ghazni province of Afghanistan. The girl is currently under treatment in the provincial hospital of Ghazni. Doctors in the hospital say that her condition is better now.      more...

Xinhua: As many as 37 civilians have been killed in an airstrike of U.S.-led troops in southern Afghanistan while attending a wedding party, local Afghan villagers said Wednesday. Haji Roozi Khan, owner of the mentioned house, told Xinhua on the spot that the air bombing and firing meant to retaliate on militants who hit the wedding gathering, killing 10 women, 23 children, and four men, all civilians.      more...

Times Online: Nearly 4,000 new mental health cases were reported in the Armed Forces last year, according to Ministry of Defence figures. Women in the Forces also suffered from a higher rate of mental disorder than their male counterparts. Seven hundred servicewomen, some of whom will have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, were assessed last year as having a form of mental health illness. Of the 868 patients treated between October and December, the number of women with mental disorders was the equivalent of 8 per 1,000 compared with 4 per 1,000 men.      more...

Daily Times: The Taliban — blamed nowadays for just about all of Afghanistan’s ills — have officially been gone for nearly seven years, so why are conditions still so abysmal? While billions of dollars in aid have led to improvements in urban areas, where health facilities have been built and midwives trained, the overall maternal death figures have hardly changed. As one doctor told me: “A competent midwife or nurse would rather be out of work in Kabul than stuck in a remote village.” But most Afghans live in remote villages — those in Badakhshan can be reached only after a day’s bumpy ride on a donkey.      more...

PAN: A woman in the district of Ali Shing, eastern Laghman province, committed self immolation and died on Friday night due to domestic violence. The woman, married in an exchange marriage, was mistreated by her in-laws, Muhammad Qader, resident of Shagi area, told Pajhwok Afghan News.      more...

PAN: More than 80% Afghans are faced by mental health problems due to long war and economic depravity, where as child stress has increased by 30%, compared to the past, said Dr. Khalid Mufti, a well known Psychiatrist here on Friday.      more...

Reuters: Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma, from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday. Kimerling said in a telephone interview the term "military sexual trauma" covers a range of events from coerced sex to outright rape or threatening and unwelcome sexual advances. "If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault ... it is possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic," she said. The study does not cover active-duty servicemen and women, as VA services are only available to discharged veterans.      more...

RAWA News: To condemn the presence of Afghan criminals in the Mini-Peace Jirga in Islamabad, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) held a sit-in protest on October 28, 2008. RAWA denounced the participation of corrupt people and criminals like Abdullah (head of the delegation), Kabir Ranjbar, Arif Noorzai and Farooq Wardak. RAWA emphasized that such murderers and traitors can’t solve the problem of terrorism in both the countries and in no way can represent the Afghan people. The hands of above-mentioned people are stained with the blood of our innocent people.      more...

Los Angeles Times: Taliban gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed a Western woman aid worker in the Afghan capital today, fueling a sense that insurgents are increasingly encroaching on the country's seat of government. A suicide bomber also killed two Western soldiers and five children in the north of Afghanistan, where violence is relatively rare.      more...

Quqnoos: Police have found the dead body of a 16-year-old girl, who police say was raped and then shot, in the south-eastern province of Khost (Afghanistan). The head of the province’s anti-crime branch, Gul Dad, said the body was found on Saturday and was handed over to the girl’s parents the next day.      more...

TrendNews: The six-year-old, Samiullah, a resident of the provincial capital Aibak was raped by 18-year-old Muhammad Ullah on Friday after the teenager lured Samiullah into his garden with offerings of fruit, the head of the province’s criminal branch, Habib-ul-Rahman Saighani, said.      more...

The Nation Magazine: Seven years after the US invasion of Afghanistan, our devastated country is still chained to the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban; the country is like an unconscious body breathing its last. The US government and its allies exploited the plight of Afghan women to legitimate its so-called "war on terror" and attack on Afghanistan. The medieval and brutal regime of the Taliban was toppled, but instead of relying on Afghan people, the United States and its allies pushed us from the frying pan to the fire and brought the infamous criminals of the "Northern Alliance" into power--sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, who are as dark-minded, evil, anti-women and cruel as the Taliban.      more...

BBC News: In valleys and villages across Badakshan, a province located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, such stories are common. Maternal mortality, when a woman dies during or shortly after pregnancy, is believed to be the highest in the world here. According to statistics published by the UN in 2002, the province had the highest rate of mortal maternity ever recorded.      more...

The Sunday Times: Nobody seriously thinks the Taliban could take Kabul. The capital is surrounded by mountains, has only a few routes in and remained almost untouched during the Russian occupation. Afghanistan has more than 71,000 foreign troops under the leadership of Nato and the US, neither of which can contemplate defeat. It is hard to find any Afghan families who hanker after a Taliban regime that banned everything from girls’ schools to television and regarded public amputations and executions as entertainment. However, the fear among Kabulis is palpable. “There is a sense of dread of return to the dark days of the past,” said a western diplomat.      more...

Canwest News Service: As Afghanistan's most senior and most famous female police officer, based in the country's ultra-conservative south, Lieut.-Col. Malalai Kakar knew she was a marked woman. On Sunday, two days after taking part in a Canadian event to mark the end of Islam's holiest month, insurgents grimly confirmed her fears, shooting Kakar dead as she left her house.      more...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): The police of Kabul say that they have arrested seven people for having raped a 12-year old girl in the city. The command police of Kabul said that the matter of the rape of the girl had been reported to them two days earlier and the girl had claimed that she had been raped by twelve men.      more...

The National: RAWA was founded in 1977 by a group of female Afghan intellectuals with the aim of building a government along democratic and secular lines. In the ensuing decades it has protested against foreign occupation and religious extremism, while carrying out such social work as running schools and medical services for refugees who fled to Pakistan. RAWA has never been able to operate openly in this deeply conservative society. Its leader was assassinated in the late 1980s and members now believe US-backed warlords and officials are among those who      more...

IOM: Trafficking in persons is a crime that can impair a personality and even destroy a human life and it gravely affects today’s Afghanistan as a source, transit and destination country. The traffickers ruthlessly exploit men, women and children by violating their basic human rights and this modern-day form of slavery continues to thrive with impunity.      more...

CounterPunch.com: The antiwar movement in the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore the war in Afghanistan without fading into irrelevance. The original aims of the war on terror have been resuscitated, and as Obama has repeatedly emphasized in recent months, its “central front” is shifting back to Afghanistan. The Afghan people have endured seven long years of misery thanks to U.S. occupation, and it is high time to take a principled stand against U.S. imperial aims in Central Asia. The war on Afghanistan is no more justified than the war on Iraq.      more...

The Washington Post: Rape is an endemic problem in Afghanistan. Whether women are forced into arranged marriages as child brides, or attacked by family members or local warlords, they are often held responsible for their own victimization. Afghan culture views a woman's virginity as sacrosanct, but Afghan law rarely gives her the chance to defend herself. Many women are thrown out of their families following, or even jailed.      more...

Reuters: Relatives of Afghans killed in a US-led coalition raid in western Herat province have offered to dig up graves to support claims of large-scale civilian deaths. The Aug. 22 air strike in Shindand district has outraged Afghans and opened a rift between coalition forces on the one hand and the Afghan government and the UN on the other, which both say that more than 90 civilians were killed.      more...

IRIN News: More than six years after the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2001 when all women were denied the right to work and education, many women suffer domestic and social violence, discrimination and lack of access to unbiased justice and other services, women's rights activists say. At least 184 cases of self-immolation were registered by the AIHRC in 2007 against 106 in 2006.      more...

Global Research: It is difficult to find out what is really going on in Afghanistan. The focus of the mass media is almost entirely on the military activities of the Canadian and NATO forces. There is absolutely no coverage of political developments. The news on the economy is limited to the state of the poppy industry. This is no accident. The North American media, including the CBC, has strongly supported the U.S./NATO strategy and the administration of President Hamid Karzai. Contrary to the mainstream message, things are not going well.      more...

NBC: "I thought American forces were in Afghanistan for our security," said Attiqullah, his voice trembling. "I could never have imagined that they would bomb my wedding party. They killed my entire family. I will never forgive them." An investigation by the Afghan government concluded that 52 people died in that air attack - 45 women and children were killed.      more...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Seegha (temporary marriage) has made several women in Daikundi province fate-less. Shiite scholars in Afghanistan say that according to Jafari Fiqh, temporary marriage is legal and the wife and husband can be separated after the fixed period, or change the temporary marriage to a permanent one. The scholars say that the husband and wife can marry and live together for a day or till whenever they want; but after the end of the fixed period the legal relationship ends and the wife is illegal to the husband.      more...

RAWA News: The U.S. bombs struck a large gathering of people who had congregated in Azizabad to honor a local leader who had died months earlier. A resident, Fatima, 25, explained from her hospital bed in Herat, where she wept and cursed those who carried out the air strike. “We were holding a memorial service in our home,” she said, tears running down her face. “Suddenly the infidels attacked and I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was in hospital, and they told me that all of my family were dead and already buried. Was my two-year-old child a terrorist? Then am I not also a terrorist? Why did they let me live?”      more...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): In the present year, 47 cases of self-immolation have been reported in special burn hospital in Herat. Out of these, 42 of the cases had been death as a result of the burns. This shows the rise in the graph of self-immolation, compared to last year. Seema Shir Mohammadi said the reasons for self-immolation are domestic violence, lack of awareness of families about each others’ rights, poverty and unemployment.      more...

IRIN: After Sierra Leone, Afghanistan has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world with 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 live births (at least 24,000 deaths annually), according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Badakhshan has the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the country.      more...

New York Times: President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned on Saturday a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghans — including 50 children — in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing measures to prevent the loss of civilian life in the future.      more...

Telegraph.co.uk: US-led coalition forces killed 76 civilians - including 50 women and 19 children - in a military operation yesterday, the Afghan government said. The attack, which included air strikes, took place in the Shindand district of Herat province in the west of Afghanistan and an investigation is now underway, its interior ministry said in a statement.      more...

RAWA News: On July 26, 2008, an Afghan woman was killed by her husband in Badakhshan province, in north of Afghanistan.      more...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): In Talaqan (capital city of Takhar province) nine men raped a 13-year old girl. Six people, including three policemen, have been accused of being involved in the crime and detained.      more...