BBC News: US-trained Afghan village police have committed some human rights abuses, a US military inquiry has found. The investigation followed a report by Human Rights Watch that alleged some Afghan Local Police units had committed abuses including rape and murder. Recommendations made by the US investigation include increased human rights training for the ALP, plus stronger oversight. Full story ...
PAN: Truck drivers have accused highways police of taking money from them illegally in southeastern Paktia province. Police manning checkpoints along highways took money from truck drivers for different reasons, owner of a truck, Jamal, told Pajhwok Afghan News. He alleged police on duty on the Khost-Gardez and Gardez-Ghazni highways were more merciless in this regard. Full story ...
IWPR: Armed men stopping and robbing travellers on the highways are a recurrent theme in Afghanistan. But when the groups involved are being paid to provide security, there is clearly a problem. In the southern province of Helmand, people interviewed by IWPR said they were tired of the men working for commercially-run security firms who were making their lives a misery. Full story ...
PAN: The Pakistan Army and intelligence establishment are aiding 28 insurgents groups that are toeing their line, Afghan officials alleged on Wednesday. The Pakistani security agencies were using the militant outfits to achieve the goals that they could not realise themselves, the officials told a media briefing in Kabul. Full story ...
IWPR: Zahra struggled for four years to conceal the violent truth about her daughter’s marriage. Twenty-year-old Nafisa’s husband would beat her repeatedly and throw her out of the house, while her mother Zahra did everything she could to keep the batterings a secret. It was only when Nafisa arrived at her parents’ home with a large black eye... Full story ...
Reuters: She was 15 years old, heavily pregnant and had travelled eight days on the back of a donkey to reach hospital. Suffering from seizures and high blood pressure, she died soon after at the Herat Maternity Hospital in western Afghanistan, one of the thousands of women who die in the country each year from causes linked to pregnancy and birth. Full story ...
Reuters: A controversial scheme that pays and arms Afghans to defend their villages in areas with a strong insurgent presence is likely to be expanded and extended, a senior officer from the NATO-led coalition fighting in Afghanistan has said. The Afghan Local Police (ALP) were a flagship project of General David Petraeus, who stepped down as commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan earlier this year... Full story ...
PAN: Hundreds of people rallied in Kabul on Saturday, International Human Rights Day, calling for trying war criminals. A large number of women took part in the rally organised by the Social Association of Afghan Justice Seekers (SAAJS). Carrying photos of war victims, the demonstrators asked the government to bring to justice people involved in mass murder over the past three decades. Full story ...
PAN: Officials in the central province of Kapisa on Wednesday said French soldiers had acknowledged killing and wounding civilians in a rocket strike earlier in the week. Six civilians were killed and three others wounded on December 3, when a rocket fired by ISAF soldiers hit a civilian house in the Haibatkhel area of Tagab district. Full story ...
BBC News: At least 19 Afghan civilians have been killed by a roadside bomb in southern Helmand province, said officials. The incident occurred in the province’s volatile Sangin district - a Taliban stronghold - Helmand spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. The dead are said to include women and children, many from the same family. Full story ...
BBC News: An Afghan student has been killed in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh over a relationship with a Hindu girl, police say. Hamidullah, 22, who had tattooed his girlfriend’s name, Monica, on his neck, was shot dead. His friend Naseer was injured in the attack. Hamidullah had just received his management degree and was due to fly home to Afghanistan in a few days. Full story ...
BBC News: Twin attacks apparently targeting Shia Muslims have killed at least 58 people in Afghanistan. In the deadliest incident, a suspected suicide bomb struck a shrine packed with worshippers in the capital, Kabul, killing at least 54. Another blast hit the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif at about the same time, killing four people. Full story ...
PAN: Two women carrying a banner with slogans against the foreign military presence in Afghanistan briefly disrupted the Bonn Conference in Germany on Monday. The women entered made their way to the second-floor press gallery soon after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended her speech to the gathering on Afghanistan's future direction. Full story ...
Deutsche Welle: Once again the future of Afghanistan is on the agenda. Ten years ago in Bonn, the issue was the deployment of NATO troops and the toppling of the Taliban. This time around, the summit on Monday is set to discuss the withdrawal of international forces by the end of 2014. For German peace activists this is not fast enough. Full story ...
DW-world: Mahmood is 25 years old. He joined the Afghan Solidarity Party in 2007 while he was still studying French at Kabul University. As party spokesman he organizes student rallies in Kabul for democracy and against Afghan President Karzai - whom he calls corrupt - and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Full story ...
Mail Online: Somalia and North Korea are perceived as the most corrupt countries, a report released this week said. New Zealand, on the other hand, comes in at number one with the most sparkly clean reputation for corruption. The report, released by German watchdog organisation Transparency International, ranked Britain as 16th least corrupt on a “corruption perceptions index” while the U.S. came in at number 24. Full story ...
PAN: Six civilians were killed and three others wounded when a rocket hit a civilian house in the central province of Kapisa, a senior official said on Saturday. The incident took place in the Haibatkhel area of Tagab district, where the rocket fell inside a house late in the afternoon, Governor Mehrabuddin Sapi told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
CounterPunch: American soldiers are dying so that Afghan politicians can continue looting U.S. tax dollars. Foreign aid has long been notorious for creating kleptocracies — governments of thieves. The 50+ billion USD foreign aid that the United States has dumped on Afghanistan over the past decade is a textbook case of how foreign handouts drag a nation down. Full story ...
AFP: A powerful truck bomb exploded near the gate of a NATO base in Afghanistan Friday, killing one person and wounding as many as 70 others, including a foreign soldier, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide attack at Combat Outpost McClain in Muhammad Agha district of Logar province, south of the capital Kabul, which took place at around 8:00am (0330 GMT). Full story ...
The New York Times: When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system. Full story ...
PAN: More than a hundred people on Thursday rallied in Kabul against the execution of death-row Afghans in Iranian jails, asking the neighbouring country to immediately release the bodies to the victims' relatives. Most of the protestors, hailing from 15 provinces, were relatives of the victims. Carrying pictures of their dead kin, the demonstrators urged the government to step up efforts at transferring the corpses of their relatives from Iran. Full story ...
Press TV: The afghan capital Kabul has been once again the scene of a massive demonstration against the strategic partnership issue between Afghanistan and the US. Recently, a Loya Jirga or Grand Council Meeting in Kabul gave the go-ahead to President Karzai to ink the strategic agreement with the U.S and it has greatly angered the local people. Full story ...
IWPR: The elected assembly for the western Afghan province of Herat is under fire from police and prosecutors, who accuse its members of corrupt practices including getting crime suspects released. Allegations of interference in the affairs of local government and policing reflect tensions between the 19-member elected council and the executive, local observers say. Full story ...
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Sherzai was 13 years old when his uncle sold him to Taliban insurgents for 15,000 Pakistani rupees (170 dollars). “Then the Taliban told me to carry out a suicide attack,” he said, now in a juvenile correctional facility in Kabul. “They said I would be a martyr and I would go to paradise.” Full story ...
BBC News: A gang in north Afghanistan reportedly indignant at a father’s refusal to give his daughter up for marriage have sprayed the family of five with acid. Allegedly led by the suitor, they broke into the house in Kunduz, beat the father up, then sprayed him, his wife and three daughters in the face. The father and eldest daughter are in critical condition, doctors say. Full story ...
Independent Online: The international community has been pumping huge sums of money into Afghanistan for more than a decade, but the country remains one of the world’s 10 poorest. The World Bank estimates that 15.7 billion dollars in aid flowed into the country last year alone. The economy has been growing at more than 9 per cent on average for several years, but from an extremely low base. Full story ...
PAN (Translated by RAWA): As a result of the firing of mortars by ISAF forces, three women were killed in one home and two others injured in another. Haji Mohammad Sarwar Khan, one of the tribal elders of the Zheray district, told PAN on 29th November that the incident took place two days back in the Nalghaam village of the district. Full story ...
PAN: Kabul Municipality officials on Tuesday said that 70 percent of high-rise buildings in the capital were illegally constructed, blaming the relevant authorities for failing to take action in this regard. The Onyx Construction Company’s building in Kalola Pushta and others in Nawabad, Mirwais Maidan Road and Sara-i-Shomali were built without permission from the government, an official said. Full story ...
PAN: Unidentified gunmen gang-raped a kidnapped schoolteacher in Pul-i-Khumri, the capital of northern Baghlan province, officials said on Saturday. The woman teacher was abducted by armed men from the eighth road of Baghlan-i-Markazi district late on Thursday, Col. Mohammad Kamin, the district police chief, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
NPR: In Afghanistan, a media boom followed the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, but it hasn’t been without problems. Watchdog groups report hundreds of cases of violence and intimidation against journalists, including murder. Afghan reporters have learned which topics are off limits, and they take great care to avoid offending the country’s most powerful personalities. Full story ...
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