Reuters: Mohammed Ali has no idea that the Taliban who once drove him from his home are staging a comeback in parts of Afghanistan. As a hired farmer, he is too busy worrying how to feed a family of seven on $100 a year. At the moment his children live off just bread and tea, but that is better than the harsh winter months when there is sometimes nothing. Many Afghans face a more urgent daily battle against poverty and hunger.      Full news...

Associated Press: The Army has approved new guidance to military commanders in an effort to stem the rising toll of soldier suicides, officials said late Thursday. Army leadership has become more alarmed as suicides from January through March rose to a reported 56 -- 22 confirmed and 34 still being investigated and pending confirmation. Usually, the vast majority of suspected suicides are eventually confirmed. The 2009 number compares to 140 for all of last year, a record blamed partly on strains caused by repeated deployments for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Millions of new textbooks promised and paid for by the U.S. and other foreign donors have not been delivered to schools in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has found. Other books were so poorly made they are already falling apart. The faltering effort is testimony to how much can be lost to corruption, inefficiency and bureaucracy in this tumultuous country, where it is difficult to get even the most straightforward aid project done.      Full news...

IRIN: Open defecation, lack of toilets and poor sanitation in makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Afghanistan are a health threat, particularly to children, health workers and aid agencies say. According to the Afghan government, at least 230,000 people are living in formal IDP camps and informal settlements where few sanitary, water and toilet facilities are available. About 500 families (2,500 individuals) displaced from southern regions have set up shacks, tents and mud huts in Qambar on the western outskirts of Kabul.      Full news...

National Post: Held down by men in police uniform, the half-naked victim screams in pain as another man wearing a white dishdasha brandishes a plank with a nail sticking out the end. “Get closer, get closer,” he instructs the camera operator as he sets to beating again. The man directing the action is said to be Sheik Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. His victim is Mohammed Shah Poor, an Afghan grain dealer, suspected of shortchanging the Emirati royal in a delivery.      Full news...

AFP: Dishevelled and blind in one eye, the 57-year-old hashish dealer has no fear that police might try to stop the trade he conducts from a petrol station on the edge of the dirty Kabul River. "If you give them 100 afghani (two dollars) and a joint, they would say carry on," said the man who gives his name as Mahtaabudin. "I am not afraid of anyone," he said gruffly, only agreeing to talk after he has lit a cigarette of heady hashish made from cannabis resin which he shares with some of his customers on the station's verandah.      Full news...

IRIN: Razia, aged 10, cannot go to school because doing so is deemed too risky for girls in the southern province of Kandahar, and because her father believes only boys should attend school. “My father says schools are not for girls and that girls should work at home,” she told IRIN in Kandahar, adding that she had always wanted to go to school and become a doctor.      Full news...

Quqnoos: According to UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF in Kabul, 66 per cent of Afghans are illiterate but the figure is remarkably higher for women, nearly 90 per cent. UNICEF estimates that more than 80 per cent of females and around 50 per cent of males lack accessing to education centres, mostly in the rural areas of the country. UNESCO Director for Afghanistan, Shigeru Ayoagi, marked this country with a highest rate of illiteracy in the world.      Full news...

Spero News: Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.      Full news...

The National: Even as the international community renews its pledge to help develop Afghanistan’s infrastructure and public services, health workers throughout the nation’s capital paint a picture of a daily struggle against the odds in conditions that have barely improved since 2001. The lack of funding is so severe that operations are being carried out with old versions of the wrong instruments and patients must often supply themselves with medicines. In some cases, easily preventable deaths have apparently resulted.      Full news...

PAN: Soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) shot dead three family members of a former Jihadi commander in southern Helmand province, officials said Saturday. Abdul Ahad Khan the former commander in Kabul confirmed the attack by foreign forces left three members of his family dead. ISAF helicopter opened fire on his family members at eight pm, he added, his three-months old granddaughter had survived the attack.      Full news...

Reuters: Survivors of a strong quake in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan say they spent a freezing night in the rain outside the collapsed remains of their homes because promised government help did not reach them. The local government said it had sent over 200 tents and around 600 blankets to the quake zone, and other assistance was on its way. But residents said they had seen no sign of the help, and spent a frightening night outside, with 7 or 8 aftershocks.      Full news...

USA Today: The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are overemphasizing mild traumatic brain injury among combat troops at the expense of other medical problems that are going untreated, two Army mental health researchers say in an article that has raised intense objections from other scientists studying the condition. Cols. Charles Hoge and Carl Castro say the military should scrap screening questions meant to uncover cases of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) among troops returning from combat.      Full news...

Globe and Mail: What started eight years ago as a military operation to deprive terrorists of a safe haven from which to launch attacks on the West morphed, in the eyes of many, into something much grander: an exercise in nation building and bolstering human rights. The hopes for an improvement in the lives of Afghanistan's women have been sorely challenged recently by a series of events, from the horrific acid attacks on schoolgirls in Kandahar and the targeted assassinations of female politicians and police, to what is seen as the ultimate betrayal: the Afghan government's endorsement of the family law bill that appears to legalize rape in marriage.      Full news...

OpEdNews: Last month, the new Afghanistan parliament passed the "Shia Family Law" which legitimates marital rape and child marriage for Shia Muslims who make up ~15% of the population. At least 300 women protested the law, with their faces exposed. Nearly 1,000 Afghan men and their slaves turned maniacal and stoned the protesters. Police struggled to keep the two groups apart, reports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).      Full news...

NPR: A growing number of Afghans — including children — are escaping the pain of war and poverty by using opium or heroin, for as little as a dollar a day. A United Nations survey begun this month is widely expected to show that at least 1 in 12 people in Afghanistan abuses drugs — double the number in the last survey four years ago. Experts say that the alarming trend is not being addressed by the Afghan government and its international partners, even though most officials acknowledge that the drug scourge threatens lasting stability in Afghanistan.      Full news...

PAN: The family of a 10 year old child who was sexually abused by his neighbor in Sarobi district of Kabul province demanded justice from the government. He said Perviz, 10 was molested by a son of former Jehadi commander Muhammad Dad, 22. He said: "Parviz, a mentally retard child was playing outside the house and son of Muhammad Dad took him to an empty yard and molested him".      Full news...

Common Dreams: On April 4th, at a large demonstration in Strasbourg, France, U.S. Sergeant Matthis Chiroux planned to publicly apologize to Afghan peace activist Malalai Joya for participating in the occupation of her country; however, before he could do so, the demonstration was disrupted by attacks of the French police. He made his apology instead on April 5, 2009, at the NATO Congress in Strasbourg.      Full news...

Associated Press: A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration of 300 women protesting against a new conservative marriage law on Wednesday. The women were pelted with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart. The law, passed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse — a clause that critics say legalizes marital rape. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone.      Full news...

The Age: FOR the women of Afghanistan, it is yet another brutal message — that death awaits those who choose a public life... Malalai Joya understands better than most the oppression of Afghan women — and the danger of speaking out. The women's rights activist and member of Afghanistan's national parliament has lived in hiding for five years and never spends more than 24 hours at the same house.      Full news...

Global Pundit: Sgt. Chiroux, an Individual Ready Reservist, publicly refused activation and deployment orders to Iraq, citing the war as “an illegal and immoral occupation”. He has also chosen to stay on U.S. soil to ” to defend himself from any charges brought against him by the military”. Chiroux declared in a recent press release “My resistance as a noncommissioned officer to this abhorrent occupation is just as legitimate now as it was last year”.      Full news...

The Associated Press: A NATO operation killed six civilians Monday, including a woman and a young girl, in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, villagers and officials said. But the military alliance said its force killed four to eight "militants." The governor of Kunar province, Sayed Fazelullah Wahidi, said four men also died in the NATO air strikes. Five houses were damaged, and one was demolished, Wahidi and villagers said.      Full news...

Reuters: Taliban militants publicly executed a man and girl on Monday for eloping when she was already engaged to marry someone else, an official said, in a sign of the grip the Islamists have over parts of Afghanistan. Hashim Noorzai, head of Khash Rud district in southwestern Nimruz province, said the two were executed by gun shots in front of a crowd of villagers.      Full news...

Toronto Star: A female provincial official known for fighting for women's rights was gunned down in southern Afghanistan yesterday... Gunmen killed Sitara Achakzai outside her home in Kandahar city and then drove off, said Matiullah Khan Qateh, police chief of Kandahar province. He said the four men drove up on two motorcycles and shot Achakzai as she was getting out of her car.      Full news...

RAWA News: While much continuity with Bush policies exists, some opportunistic changes in the execution of the Afghan war have been made. Most are inspired by the aim to better market “the good war” to the American public. For example, under Obama U.S/NATO forces are relying less upon deadly air strikes which are 4-10 times more deadly for Afghan civilians than are ground attacks. As a consequence, the monthly total of Afghan civilians killed by US/NATO action has declined moderately at the same time as the monthly death toll of occupation forces has risen.      Full news...

The New York Times: The Obama administration is basking in praise for its welcome commitment to shut down the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay. But it is acting far less nobly when it comes to prisoners held at a larger, more secretive military detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. In February, the new administration disappointingly followed the example of the Bush White House in opposing judicial review for prisoners who have been indefinitely detained at Bagram without any charges or access to lawyers.      Full news...

A Pakistan News: Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of Pakistani Taliban, who claimed credit for the recent deadly attack on a police academy near Lahore, has links with the country’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), a media report said.Based in lawless border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mehsud was tipped off by ISI, to enable him escape attempts to capture or kill him in the last two years.      Full news...

Reuters: The father of a seven-day-old boy said on Thursday his infant son died in an overnight raid by Afghan and U.S. forces, with the U.S. saying it was investigating the claim. A female school teacher was also killed and the child's mother wounded, the father said, during the raid in Ali Daya village in Khost province, where Taliban fighters are active      Full news...

DPA: A provincial governor in south-eastern Afghanistan said Thursday that US-led international troops killed five civilians including two women and a 7-day-old child and wounded two other women in an operation against suspected militants. The coalition troops conducted an operation in a village near Khost city, the capital of the province of the same name Wednesday night "after they claimed that they were attacked by small arms fire," Hamidullah Qalandarzai, the provincial governor, told the German Press Agency DPA.      Full news...

IRIN: Over 600,000 Afghans lack basic healthcare services due to attacks on healthcare facilities and health workers - a figure that has doubled since 2007, Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), has said. About 32 health centres were torched, destroyed and/or closed down due to insecurity in 2007, and 28 health facilities were shut down or attacked in 2008, MoPH said.      Full news...