Global Research: The United States has spent over 600 billion USD on its Afghan war effort, but most of the money has gone to military infrastructure and sophisticated weaponry; little of it has gone to the education of Afghan youth or to addressing the degradation of Afghan land. The children I am working with had never heard the word ‘ecology.’ Full story ...
The Killid Group: Nahoor in Ghazni province is picture postcard pretty. With plentiful water from streams and rain, it is green. There are orchards of apricots, plums, prunes and other fruit. Three decades ago it was the site of a bloodbath. Seventy-year-old Abdul Husain is a witness. From Deh Afghan, a village in Nahoor district, he says the scars left by war have not healed. Full story ...
PAN: Unknown assailants blew up a newly-built school building in Qala-i-Naw, the capital of northwestern Badghis province, an official said on Tuesday. They lobbed a hand-grenade into the building on Monday evening , comprehensively damaging two rooms of the school in Kharistan area, the governor’s spokesman, Sharafuddin Majidi, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
IRIN: Sadaf Ahmadi*, 18, from the northern Afghan province of Badakshan, has arrived battered and bruised at a women’s refuge centre in Faizabad. It is her fifth such visit. Every time it is the same. Staff at the centre, run by Women for Women, an Afghan NGO, try to offer support, but every previous time local community leaders or the government courts send her back to her husband and the beatings continue. Full story ...
PAN: Foreign troops opened fire at a private truck, killing its two occupants in the Deh Sabz district of central Kabul province, an official said on Monday. The incident occurred at 10:30am when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) personnel fired shots at the vehicle of a private firm responsible for providing maintenance support to police, the Ministry of Interior spokesman, Gulam Siaddique Siddiqui, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: Time and again, throughout America’s history, individuals with a passion for truth and a commitment to justice have opted to defy the unjust laws and practices of the American government in order to speak up against slavery, segregation, discrimination, and war. Even when their personal safety and freedom were on the line, these individuals spoke up... Full story ...
PAN: Violence against women has dramatically increased in eastern provinces, where 220 cases were registered since the start of this year, compared to 40 incidents during the same period in 2012, officials said on Sunday. Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC)’s women wing head for eastern provinces, Sabrina, told a gathering marking the international women’s day, there were a total of 170 incidents... Full story ...
PAN: Eight children and one policeman were killed on Saturday when a suicide attacker blew up his explosives on a road beside a joint patrol of Afghan police and international forces in this capital city of southeastern Khost province, an official said. The strike around 10:30am targeted the joint Afghan-US patrol in the Kandi area on Khost City’s outskirts, but eight passing civilians were killed... Full story ...
The Guardian: When I got married at the age of 14, I didn’t know that my husband used drugs. When I asked him why he was using heroin, he told me lies – he told me that he just smoked cigarettes, not that he was addicted to drugs. When he came home after he used drugs, he would usually beat me. Sometimes he would disappear for months at a time. Full story ...
AFP: Afghan teenager Shakila was shot in the back 13 months ago in the house where she worked as a maid for a wealthy local leader in one of the most progressive provinces of Afghanistan. Her murderer has never been arrested, and her family’s search for justice has laid bare the complex web of grinding poverty, attitudes towards women and a culture of immunity that plagues much of the country’s legal system. Full story ...
The Fiscal Times: The decision by the United States Agency for International Development to scrap the completion of a dam project meant to supply electricity to Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban in Afghanistan, is the latest and perhaps largest failure of the United States to use development dollars to create stability by building Afghan infrastructure. Full story ...
PAN: Two radio stations have been closed and at least a dozen journalists arrested or attacked by police in various parts of Afghanistan since the start of the current year, an international group said on Wednesday. Voicing its concern about an increase in harassment and violence against journalists and sanctions against news media, Reporters Without Borders said... Full story ...
Global Research: On March 1, a U.S./NATO helicopter gunship killed two Afghan brothers, seven and eight years of age, as they tended cattle in Uruzgan province. According to reports from residents, the boys were listening to a radio, which the helicopter crew interpreted as “radio signals” from Afghan resistance fighters. The latest killing comes amidst a series of atrocities against civilians that has further enflamed opposition to the ongoing occupation. Full story ...
The Nation: Two more children dead in Afghanistan, thanks to an American airstrike. The war is winding down, but try telling that to the families of the children blown to pieces by mistake. Unless you’ve been reading news accounts closely, you probably missed the story: Two boys out collecting firewood with their donkeys were killed by weapons fired from a NATO helicopter, Afghan and American military officials announced Saturday. Full story ...
Channel 4 News: It has come to this. A woman sits in the mud and puddles. The snow falls relentlessly. It is minus 6 degrees, even at 11 in the morning. But sit here she must. If she moves suddenly, she will be hit, for she sits in the middle of the road and covered head to foot in the blue burkha. Her vision is restricted ahead and her peripheral vision is non-existent. Full story ...
Reuters: NATO forces accidentally shot dead two boys during an operation in Afghanistan’s south, the alliance said on Saturday, in the latest in a series of incidents involving allegations of civilian deaths at the hands of international troops. The two boys were shot dead when they were mistaken for insurgents during an operation in the northwest of Uruzgan on February 28, ISAF commander, U.S. General Joseph Dunford, said in a statement. Full story ...
Digital Journal: Even though the Taliban government in Afghanistan fell more than ten years ago, the justice system is still discriminatory in its treatment of women as is the legal system. Al Jazeera reporter, Jennifer Glasse reports from Herat at a women’s jail. Many Afghan women are in jail for fleeing domestic abuse or violence. Full story ...
The Japan Times: A report just released by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan states that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 civilian injuries in that country during 2012. Unmentioned is a serious side effect of the conflict: the high number of opium-addicted children in Afghanistan. The number has increased systematically the past few years. Full story ...
The Sunday Times: Handing over security operations in Afghanistan to the Afghans is “proceeding very well”, Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, said on a recent visit to Helmand. “The Afghans are developing capabilities faster than we expected.” He was echoing the unbridled optimism of many British and American officials. Having just returned from five weeks in Sangin &# Full story ...
Reuters: More than five hundred men marched through the capital of Afghanistan’s restive Wardak province on Tuesday in an outburst of anger against U.S. special forces accused of overseeing torture and killings in the area. Shouting “Death to America”, “Death to Obama” and “Death to special forces”, the protesters called for the immediate withdrawal of the American soldiers and threatened to join the Taliban if their demand was not met. Full story ...
The Guardian: In 2010, as WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified documents relating to the conduct of the US government, government defenders dismissively claimed that they revealed nothing new. Among the many documents disproving that claim were ones relating to a US policy in Iraq set forth in “Frago 242”, which ordered coalition troops not to stop or even investigate torture and other war crimes by the Iraqi forces they were training, but simply to “note” them. Full story ...
Deutsche Welle: While opium trade might be lucrative for some of those involved, many find themselves at the losing end. Daughters of farmers who find themselves desperate and indebted are used as little more than currency. To provide for their families, many Afghan farmers turn to the relatively lucrative practise of poppy cultivation. Full story ...
The Killid Group: In April 1987, Afghanistan ratified the UN Convention against Torture. But it did not stop either the government or its opponents from using the most cruel and inhuman methods to punish and extract information from political rivals. The crimes were never probed; the victims were never compensated. Full story ...
Pak Tribune: Combined force allegedly killed four civilians in Kunduz district, capital of northern Kunduz province on Thursday, local resident said. Afghan and foreign forces raided the house of a local resident, Saifur Rahman, at approximately 1:30 a.m. (local time), killing him, his two sons, Dilarwa and 18-year-old Hayatullah... Full story ...
Pluto Press: As Obama proclaims that the US adventure in Afghanistan will draw to a close over the next couple years, we may look at the balance sheet with respect to one of the occupation’s alleged justifications: the fight against Afghan heroin. The outcome has been a total failure. Full story ...
A man has murdered his wife with a razor blade after prolonged domestic quarrels arising from financial difficulties, Kabul Police officials said Thursday. “This heart-wrenching and tragic incident took place in Zone 7 of Kabul city. The people of the area informed us, and the police reached the area within a short time and arrested the man before he managed to escape,”... Full story ...
RT: Violence against women and girls in Afghanistan is growing. A UN report says crimes against females jumped by 20 per cent last year, adding that the Taliban and other insurgent groups were responsible for 81 per cent of civilian casualties in 2012. The annual report on the Protection of Civilians in armed conflict, released Tuesday, said that more than 300 women and girls were killed in 2012 as a result of targeted killings by insurgents. Full story ...
Examiner.com: Hamid Karzai, president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, has endorsed the nation’s Ulema Council’s ruling in accordance with Islamic Sharia Law that approves of wife beating and the forced segregation of the sexes. As reported by the Associated Press via the Washington Post, Karzai’s endorsement is part of his national reconciliation outreach to the Taliban. Full story ...
The Killid Group: Mohammad Hasan says he had a good life before the breakout of war in the nineties. The fighting between mujahedin factions rendered him a pauper. Two decades have passed, he has not recovered. Before the war, Hasan, 67, was a motor mechanic in a village near Ghazni. “I was a popular mechanic, and I had a good life. I had 80 barrels of oil in my shop. I had a truck,” h Full story ...
PAN: A 30-year-old woman, a relative of a former Taliban governor, was publicly whipped by the rebels for having alleged sexual relations with a man who received 27 lashes before being expelled from western Ghor province, officials said on Monday. The whipping took place in Gurgin village of Charsada district late on Friday, a provincial high peace council member, Nasrullah, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
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