Fox News: Afghanistan has suffered from foreign meddling since its inception. But while Pakistan’s role has been widely discussed -- most Afghans will point to concrete examples -- Iran’s involvement is more subtle. Iranian influence is all encompassing--the Islamic government funds Afghan Shiite sects and politicians, has invested in building roads and providing fuel and transport... Full story ...
AFP: Mohammad Qasim, a 58-year-old butcher, is traumatised, depressed and anxious -- like 50 percent of his fellow Afghans after 30 years of war, according to government figures. Qasim saw his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandsons aged five and six die in a horrific suicide bombing in Kabul last month. Full story ...
Human Rights Watch: The dire human rights situation in Afghanistan showed few signs of progress in the past year, raising serious concerns about the future, Human Right Watch said today in its World Report 2012. While progress was made in Afghanistan in several areas, the general population and women in particular suffered from the widespread lawlessness and abuses by the security forces and armed groups, Human Rights Watch said. Full story ...
Reuters: With snow piled deep in front of his small Kabul shop and a border shutdown enforced by Pakistan driving up food prices and severing a vital lifeline into Afghanistan, Asmatullah is having his own winter of discontent. Since Pakistan closed supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the coalition killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border air attack in November, ordinary Afghans and foreigners alike are feeling the impact of soaring food costs. Full story ...
PAN: Illegal gunmen have prevented contractors from clearing roads of snow in western Ghor province, an official said on Monday. The gunmen sought money from contractors in return for letting them continue snow-clearing operations, the Afghanistan Natural Disasters Management Authority head for Ghor said. Full story ...
PAN: Seventy percent of children in a district of eastern Nangarhar province have caught various diseases due to exposure to harsh weather conditions, officials and residents said on Monday. Up to 100 centimetres of snow had been recorded so far in the Hesarak district, where roads connecting the town with Jalalabad remained closed, said the district development council head. Full story ...
Womensenews: In the summer of 2003, I met a girl in an Afghan town straddling the desert who would become an obsession for me. I knew her for only a few weeks, but those few weeks shaped the next four years of my life in Afghanistan. What I remember most about her is her scared look, a gaze that deepened her otherwise blank green eyes. Full story ...
RAWA News: A couple of heavy snowfalls in Kabul guaranteeing that a drought won’t hit Kabul this year, made life all the more harder on its poor people. Already battered by war waged by the foreign forces and Taliban, poverty and cold mercilessly put people on a test for survival. The prices of fuels rose like every year but the prices of food items skyrocketed this year as Pakistan has closed the most used trade route. Full story ...
AFP: Hundreds of people took to the streets in a town in northeastern Afghanistan Thursday in protest over a night raid by Afghan and NATO forces that allegedly killed six civilians, an official said. A woman and a child were among the dead in the air and ground raid on Dewa Gul Vally, a Taliban stronghold in the Chawki district of Kunar province, on Monday night, provincial governor Fazlullah Wahidi told AFP. Full story ...
The Washington Post: The attack erupted in one of the best-protected parts of Afghanistan: the military-controlled portion of the Kabul airport. As two dozen people gathered for a routine morning meeting in a conference room, an overweight and aging Afghan helicopter pilot pulled a pistol out of his flight suit and began shooting U.S. Air Force officers in the backs of their heads. Full story ...
IWPR: As Afghanistan marked the eighth anniversary of its constitution this month, legal experts bemoaned the failure to put it into practice, blaming conflict, corruption and a culture of impunity. The constitution passed on January 4, 2004 laid out a vision of a modern Afghanistan committed to human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Full story ...
...hit areas cut off by heavy snows, officials said. The Afghan National Disaster Management Agency said Thursday that at least 40 more people have been injured in a series of avalanches since Monday in badakhshan province.... Full story ...
Adelaide Now: Taxpayers will be hit with another 1 billion-plus USD bill to fund the war in Afghanistan next year as the Government struggles to conjure up a surplus in its May Budget. The cost of war hit 1.6 billion USD for last financial year or more than 1 million USD each for the 1550 Diggers on the ground. Full story ...
The Guardian: For citizens going into battle against Afghanistan’s officialdom, the warren-like building across the road from the headquarters of Kabul’s police chief is a one-stop shop for every document they could need. From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job application letters. Full story ...
AFP: British military police have arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused children in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Wednesday, prompting a furious reaction from Kabul. The Sun newspaper reported that a sergeant and a private from the Mercian Battle Group have been arrested over claims that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents. Full story ...
The Nation: Opium trade is a major component of Afghan economy that contributes to funding insurgency and escalating corruption in the country, while Afghan opium trade may have exceeded 2.4 billion USD, equivalent to 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the UN and an Afghan body said on Monday. Full story ...
The New York Times: It has often been called the polio cease-fire. In a country where insurgents have for years attacked and killed people working for the government or the international community, a small army of vaccination teams connected to both has, year after year, fanned out through some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas, quietly and mostly safely. Full story ...
PAN: Incidents of violence against women increased in central Uruzgan province this year, when 60 cases were registered in the provincial capital alone, the Department of Women’s Affairs said on Sunday. Most of the incidents took place in far-flung areas, where some cases went unreported due to insecurity and other problems, Women’s Affairs Director Rana Sami Wafa told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
The Telegraph: The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest. Full story ...
Los Angeles Times: Pentagon officials said Thursday they believed a video showing four Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans was authentic, and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta promised to investigate the incident, calling it “utterly deplorable.” As outrage over the explicit video spread, the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said the behavior was confined to “a small group of U.S. individuals”... Full story ...
AFP: Production of opium and the illicit crop’s value soared in Afghanistan last year, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday. According to the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, farmer income derived from Afghanistan’s opium crop in 2011 was 1.4 billion USD (1.09 billion euros), representing nine percent of GDP. Full story ...
IWPR: All Rahmatollah wants is the paperwork allowing him to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan so he can take a sick relative for treatment. For the last fortnight, though, he has been standing outside the census office in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, waiting to be served. “The officials aren’t here. Even if they are, they only work two hours a day,” Rahmatollah, a resident of Charchino district, told IWPR. Full story ...
Los Angeles Times: In the gray light of each cold dawn, the parents of 10-month-old Shoaib hold their own breath as they listen for the rasp of his, waiting to see whether their coughing, feverish little boy has survived another night. Winter's chill has settled over the Afghan capital, and with it, privation is sharpening, especially among the city’s poor. Full story ...
Reuters: Only one in three Afghans has access to electricity despite years of spending to improve supply, and the country is still far too dependent on imported power, the head of the country’s state owned power utility told Reuters. Abdul Razique Samadi, the chief executive officer at Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), said the situation in the capital, Kabul, is far better ... Full story ...
PAN: Three policemen were detained in connection with the abduction of children in central Logar and southeastern Paktia provinces, an official said on Sunday. One policeman in Paktia and two in Logar were arrested on the basis of complaints from residents, the Logar crime branch chief told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
Digital Journal: As America works to hand over control of Afghan detention facilities to the Afghan authorities, a new report by an Afghan investigative commission says inmates at a Bagram prison claim they have been tortured. The prison in Bagram, Afghanistan is known as “the forgotten second Guantanamo” but worse than Guantanamo. Full story ...
PAN: The Taliban have executed an 18-year-old boy on the accusation of spying for the government in southeastern Paktika province, an official said on Saturday. The victim identified as Sher Khan, was killed by the insurgent a day earlier in the Mohammad Khel village near the provincial capital, Sharan, the governor’s spokesman, Mukhlis Afghan, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
The Associated Press: Explosives hidden in a trash heap killed six children in southern Afghanistan Friday, police said, and five NATO troops were killed in roadside bombings in the volatile region. The children were rummaging through the trash for food scraps and bottles in the southern province of Uruzgon when the blast killed them, police spokesman Farid Ayal said. Full story ...
The Ottawa Citizen: The shocking story of a 15-year-old Afghan child-bride tortured nearly to death after being sent back to her abusive husband and his family illustrates the sad truth that Afghanistan remains one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman, despite the stated intentions of countries like Canada to change things. Full story ...
PAN: Juma Khan, a resident of Khwahan district in northeastern badakhshan province, says the ongoing drought and snowfall have destroyed all of his property, forcing him to hand over his six children to the district chief for survival. Speaking over the telephone, he said the ongoing drought and continued snowfall had badly affected him economically. Full story ...
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