ATN: An 8-year old girl was raped in the Takhar province. General Ziauddin Mahmoodi, the commander of the police of Takhar said that the man involved has been arrested and is in the custody of the police now. Dr. Ashrafuddin Aini, head of the Civil Hospital of Takhar said that the 8-year old is admitted in this hospital and is under treatment.      Full news...

AFP: Even Mother Nature was cruel on the day 15 years ago when rampaging thugs chopped off Marzia's fingers for a gold ring and shot dead her nine-year-old son when he cried out to object. It was a bone-chillingly cold morning, she recalls, when militia loyal to Pashtun warlord Abdul Rab-Rasoul Sayyaf -- now a parliamentarian -- captured her village, west of Kabul and dominated by ethnic Hazaras.      Full news...

PAN: A 16-year old girl was kidnapped by unknown armed men in the Nahreen District of Baghlan province. The parents of 16-year old Guldana claimed that she had been kidnapped by a group of five unknown, armed men in the middle of the night in the New City area.      Full news...

Belfast Telegraph: US soldiers have killed six Afghan civilians during a military raid in the east of the country this morning, according to a local official. A woman and two children are said to be among the dead following the operation in the village of Hom, close to the Pakistani border.      Full news...

Internationalen Weekly: Undeterred by the “international community’s” political exigencies, the Afghan woman has not given up her struggle for peace, democracy, liberation as well as her right to education, health and work. Nowhere, perhaps nowhere in the world, one finds a woman as keen for education as an Afghan woman. And embodiment of this struggle is RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Woman of Afghanistan. Alerting the world since 1977 to the sufferings and struggle of Afghan woman, RAWA is the only woman, if not political, formation to have survived 30 years of Afghan war. An achievement in itself. ‘There is no organization on earth like it’, says John Pilger.      Full news...

PAN: Poverty and parental fights led a young girl named Farzana in Jowzjan province in Northern Afghanistan to hang herself and commit suicide.      Full news...

Spero News: Since March of 2007 until now, there has been a 40% increase in reports of physical violence against women in Afghanistan, according to United Nations sources.      Full news...

Rabble.ca's Derrick O'Keefe recently gathered a significant statement by Malalai Joya, one of the more courageous and heroic political figures in Afghanistan today. She makes the memorable statement below about the billions of dollars in military spending and aid money which has effectively been squandered in Afghanistan by the run-away corruption of the Karzai government.      Full news...

UN News Centre: Some 24,000 Afghan women die every year while giving birth, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is working with the Government and other partners to reduce maternal mortality and improve the overall health of women and girls in the war-torn nation.      Full news...

RAWA: The woman belonging to Gulran District of Herat province in Western Afghanistan had been burnt with hot water, a bullet had been found buried in her abdomen and her hair had been pulled out with his hands. She says he fired on her by a pistol but she survived.      Full news...

The Independent: Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.      Full news...

RAWA: A fourteen-year old girl named Bashira belonging to Sar-e-Pul province was gang-raped by three men on February 18, 2008. One of the rapists is Najibullah, the son of Haji Payinda, a member of parliament from Sar-e-Pul.      Full news...

RAWA News: A young girl was gang-raped, yet again, in Northern Afghanistan by three men. Bashira, a fourteen year old student of the sixth grade who had come to the city on Feb.18, 2008 to get the aid which was being distributed, was gang raped by three men in Sarpul province.      Full news...

Pajamas Media Inc.: I lived in Kabul nearly fifty years ago. It was enchanting and dangerous. I lived on a wide and gracious street lined with trees. We had electricity, phones, hot and cold running water, and marble bathrooms. There was a movie theatre and an American-style cafeteria restaurant. Bazaars flourished, mosques shimmered, a thousand (all male) tea-houses thrived. Barefoot boys scurried bearing tea for businessmen all day long.      Full news...

RAWA: On February 12, 2008, Amina the daughter of Said Gul of Khushk Aaba Village in Khaksafed District of Farah province was sentenced to death in a field trial by the local clerics Scholars Council of the village for running away from her home with a stranger. Her husband and other close relatives approved of the punishment.      Full news...

RAWA: On the night of 3rd February 2008 a man in Mazar-e-Sharif killed his two wives with an axe. The man was arrested by the police. According to the police authorities of Mazar-e-Sharif, this man introduced himself as Sahib Khan of Takhar province.      Full news...

RAWA: Nafisa is hospitalized with her child in a local hospital in Herat province in Western Afghanistan. She says her husband attacked her like a hungry tiger and bat her nose and then cut off her ear by a knife. She showed her child who is also burnt by her husband. Nafisa says: “I’ve lived ten painful years with my husband and he always beats me…. My husband also poured hot water over my child and she is also seriously injured.”      Full news...

PAN: At least 30 women lost their lives by committing self-immolation in Farah province this year. The figure is double as compared to last year. Lailuma Sediqi, head of women affairs department in the province told Pajhwok Afghan News during last two months 64 cases of women burnings, half of them were self immolation were registered in the department.      Full news...

Independent.co.uk: After six years in control, this government has proved itself to be as bad as the Taliban – in fact, it is little more than a photocopy of the Taliban. The situation in Afghanistan is getting progressively worse – and not just for women, but for all Afghans.      Full news...

IRIN News: Knocking on the windows of cars stuck in traffic on Shar-e-Naw Street in Kabul, Zulaikha and her children beg for money to keep warm and feed themselves. Their daily routine starts at about 7am and ends at 6pm every day.      Full news...

PAN: A dejected young Afghan woman having a domestic dispute with her husband tried to take her life in Mehtarlam High Court on Wednesday, court officials said.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Reportedly dejected with her engagement to a young man by her parents, an 18-year-old girl ended her life by shooting herself to death in Jabul-Saraj district of central Parwan province, security officials said on Sunday.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Poverty, cold weather, and hunger forced a woman to sell her four month baby in Kunduz. Mahboba, 26, whose lower limbs are paralyzed is living in a dark muddy room in Sar- dara area of Kunduz city.      Full news...

The Deccan Herald: Unicef’s winner of the best picture in 2007 is a chilling reminder of the condition of the region’s child brides. Poverty may have made women and young girls more vulnerable, but the methods of exploitation they suffer take on an altogether different proportion in a country wracked by 30 years of unending conflict.      Full news...

IWPR: “I do not enjoy being with men. I hate them. But to keep them as loyal customers, I pretend,” said the young Afghan woman. Dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, with shoulder-length black hair and wearing no makeup, 21-year-old Saida (not her real name) looked ordinary enough. But in this highly conservative society, she has sex with men for money, sometimes several times a night.      Full news...

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...

IRIN News: A man named Mumtaz in southern Zabul province of Afghanistan first shaved wife, Nazia’s head and then cut off her ears, and nose and damaged her teeth on the first day of Eid ul Adha, an Islamic ritual of sacrifice. “One night he hit me so much that I fainted. When I regained consciousness I found my head had been shaved. I cried so much, but he did not care.”      Full news...

UNICEF: The American photographer Stephanie Sinclair is the winner of the international photo competition "UNICEF Photo of the Year". Her photo shows a wedding couple in Afghanistan who could not be more opposite. The groom, Mohammed, looks much older than his 40 years. The bride, Ghulam, is still a child; she just turned 11. "The UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007 raises awareness about a worldwide problem. Millions of girls are married while they are still under age.      Full news...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: An 11-year-old child bride sits next to her 40-year-old fiance. For UNICEF, this was the Photo of the Year. Dutch writer Leon de Winter laments the perversity of this wedding picture and the frightening relativism of the West.      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...