AFP: At a bustling Kabul market, people smugglers are making a quick buck out of Afghans increasingly desperate to buy a new life in Europe before NATO combat forces leave in 2014. Ordinary people pay up to $13,000 for the chance to embark on a long and perilous journey -- hiding in truck chassis, stowing away on boats or trekking across mountains -- that they hope will take them to a better life. Full story ...
BBC: Seven civilians, including six children, have been killed in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, local officials say. District Governor Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi told the BBC the civilians died late on Wednesday in the Zheray district of Kandahar province. He said the strike had been launched in a remote area after Taliban insurgents were seen planting roadside bombs. Full story ...
CNN: Afghan prosecutors announced Wednesday that a young rape victim, jailed for adultery after reporting the crime and pushed into marrying her attacker, would have her sentence reduced from twelve to three years. The prosecutor said she would, for now, remain in jail -- with her child -- for not reporting her attack fast enough. 21-year-old Gulnaz was attacked by a relative two years ago, but sentenced to 12 years in jail for adultery. Full story ...
VOA: In an effort to counter a growing insurgency in northern Afghanistan, two U.S.-backed programs in Kunduz have recruited local militias to oppose Taliban militants in the area. But while the militias are better at fighting the Taliban on the battlefield, their methods turn local populations against them. Full story ...
RFE/RL: Thousands of children roam the dusty streets and grimy alleyways of Afghanistan, working to earn desperately needed money for their families. The sight of shabbily-dressed children, sometimes as young as three years old, is a common one around the military bases and shopping areas where they ply their trades under the blazing sun of summer or the biting cold of winter. Full story ...
The New York Times: The gifts referred to in the title of “Blood and Gifts,” a superb new play by J. T. Rogers about the long history behind the American involvement in Afghanistan, are on ominous view throughout the play. Big boxes are carried onstage and cracked open to reveal piles of artillery. Shiny new rifles are waved in the air like harmless toys. Suitcases full of dollars are handed over with a cool smile. Full story ...
Khaama Press: Officials in the Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan on Sunday expressed concerns regarding increasing violence agains the women during the past six months. According to an official in the Human Right Commission of Afghanistan, Suraya Sobhrang, around 2433 violence against the women cases have been registered across the country during the past six months which shows an increase as compared to the previous year. Full story ...
The Associated Press: More than 1,000 university students blocked a main highway in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday as they protested against any agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan after a planned transfer of authority in 2014. An assembly of more than 2,000 tribal elders and dignitaries known as a loya jirga endorsed the idea of such agreement in a conference that ended Saturday... Full story ...
Salon: It’s not exactly breaking news that Afghanistan is rife with corruption. But a new Congressional Research Service report obtained by Salon underscores just how bad things have gotten — and just how much taxpayer money is being lost to fraud. Full story ...
Pakistan Observer: AS part of the Great War in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has convened a farcical show of hand-picked cronies in Kabul, called Loya Jirga, to endorse plans for long-term strategic relationship between the United States and Afghanistan that, among other things, would legitimize establishment of six US permanent military bases in the strategically located country. Full story ...
AFP: Eight Afghans, including seven children, were killed in two separate blasts Friday, officials said, the latest civilian deaths to hit the troubled country. In the first incident, four children died when a roadside bomb went off as they played near their home in Nangarhar province, near the country’s eastern border with Pakistan. Full story ...
BBC News: More than 2.5 million people face hunger in drought-stricken areas of Afghanistan despite billions of dollars of aid that have poured into the country in recent years, aid agencies say. Many villagers have only limited supplies of food left as winter looms, as the BBC’s Mike Thomson reports from the central province of Bamiyan. Full story ...
The Christian Science Monitor: With his broad cheekbones, hair swept back under a sequined cap, and the gentle manner of a well-to-do Pashtun, Atal Afghanzai might easily pass for a doctor or an engineer. Instead, his career path led into a cloak-and-dagger world of covert armies and foreign agents, until a rare lethal run-in with an Afghan police chief landed him on death row in Kabul’s most notorious prison. Full story ...
Al Jazeera: A US-funded survey in Afghanistan says that 73 per cent of the population is satisfied with the government’s performance, a claim which leaders and analysts have disputed as being far from reality. The survey, published by Asia Foundation, a US-based non-profit with more than a dozen offices across Asia, also said that nearly half of Afghans think their country is moving in the right direction. Full story ...
The Daily Star: “The Taliban come to any house they please, by force. Then they fire from that house, and then [the International Security and Assistance Force] and the Afghan National Army fire at the house. But if I tell the Taliban not to enter, the Taliban will kill me. So what is the answer? Either ISAF kills me or the Taliban kills me. The people cannot live like this.” Full story ...
IWPR: In a parliamentary scandal of a peculiarly Afghan variety, former members are failing to hand back the firearms they were issued with. As well as around 400 Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, computers have gone missing from former members’ offices, parliamentary staff say. Although the loss of weapons and other items may seem minor in a country awash with guns and plagued with corruption... Full story ...
CBS News: The former prisoner of the American military in his native Afghanistan entered the office leaning on a crutch. He said he had trouble walking after spending a year confined to a 35-square-foot jail cell at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, about an hour’s drive north of the capital, Kabul. He agreed to speak with us only if we kept his identity hidden. We agreed to call him just “Mohammed.” Full story ...
PAN: A sharp increase has been registered in fuel prices over the 10 days in western Herat province, which borders a major gas exporting country, Turkmenistan. The price of a kilogram of liquefied gas has increased by 25 afghanis during the period, residents of Herat city, the provincial capital, say Full story ...
The Times: Assadullah Sher Mohammad, who is serving 12 years in Kabul’s notorious Pul-e Charkhi jail for raping and making pregnant a 19-year-old relative, said the EU “had done a good thing”. Yet his endorsement, first delivered when The Times visited him in jail two months ago and reiterated by his brother yesterday, has highlighted the EU’s growing isolation. Full story ...
AFP: Eight civilians including a newly-wed groom were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on Saturday, the latest innocent victims to die despite a Taliban call to limit their deaths. The victims, who also included a woman and a child, were killed in the eastern province of Laghman when their car was blown up as they returned home after the man’s wedding party late Friday. Full story ...
Politico: As the U.S. continues its efforts to help Afghanistan, a new poll shows that the percentage of Afghans who are suffering is rising, based on what they say about their lives. Three out of ten Afghans, or 30 percent, were determined in the latest Gallup poll to be “suffering.” This is 7 percentage points higher than in 2010, when 23 percent of Afghans were classified as suffering. Full story ...
AFP: A mother and daughter were killed in their home in eastern Afghanistan Friday by armed men who apparently accused them of “immoral activities,” officials and neighbours said. The two attackers burst into the home of the widow and her daughter in Ghazni city at around 4:00 am and shot them dead, said Ghazni provincial police chief Zilawar Zahid. Full story ...
PAN: A civilian was killed during a clash between Taliban fighters and security forces in the western province of Farah, officials said on Friday. The clash erupted on Thursday evening in the Shiwan village of Bala Boluk district when Taliban fighters attacked a police checkpoint, the district police chief, Maj. Abdul Basir, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
Global Post: The European Union has banned a film that it commissioned about Afghan women in prison for “moral crimes”. The decision to block the release has led to row between the EU, the film-makers and human rights activists, the ABC reported. The documentary, called In-Justice, was reportedly withdrawn because of concerns for the safety of the women it portrayed. Full story ...
The Times: Sonia stole some money from her mother’s dresser and fled the house in such a panic that it was only in the road outside that she realised her shoes were different colours. But by then it was too dangerous to turn back. Shrouded in a burka and with tears streaming down her face, the 14-year-old was fleeing an arranged marriage to a Taleban insurgent. Full story ...
IRIN: Resettlement challenges in Afghanistan have discouraged refugees living in neighbouring countries from going home, with 60,000 returning in the past 10 months against 100,000 during the same period last year, officials said. "The most important [reasons] relate to lack of opportunities for livelihoods and shelter, but also due to insecurity in some parts of the country,"... Full story ...
Xinhua: In many countries, including Afghanistan, begging has been regarded as a taboo, but in this war- ravaged and poverty-stricken country, many people including women has adopted begging as a profession to support their families. “Continued conflicts have destroyed my life, claimed the life of my husband and forcing me to beg for alms in order to survive,”... Full story ...
IWPR: A controversial film depicting the plight of Afghan refugees in Iran was pulled at the eleventh hour in Kabul, sparking angry allegations that the authorities had caved into pressure from Tehran. As the furore over the cancellation escalated, the Afghan parliament summoned information and culture minister Sayed Makhdum Rahin, who has oversight over such events. Full story ...
The Times: If it weren’t for the tank traps and grey blast-walls, the extravagant mansions in Kabul’s most expensive neighbourhood would not look out of place in a fairytale. Ornately gilded pillars hold up pastel-hued balconies; brightly coloured domes crown mosaic walls made of mirrored tiles. Yet Sherpur district, which 130 years ago hosted General Frederick Roberts’s cantonment during the Second AngloAfghan war, is anything but magical. Full story ...
The San Francisco Chronicle: Hardly anyone noticed, but the Afghan government cut the budget for the state’s Independent Human Rights Commission by half this year, evidencing “the government’s lack of interest and political will in the promotion of human rights,” the commission said. Nowhere on Earth is the work of a human rights commission more important than in Afghanistan. Why is that? Full story ...
< 1 2 3 ... 78 79 80 ... 159 160 161 >