The New York Times: One afternoon this summer, in a park beside the Ajmil River, I sat with seven residents of Shahabuddin, a collection of villages in northern Afghanistan’s Baghlan Province. It was the first week of Ramadan, and the park was almost empty, but still the men — some middle-aged, others stooped and gray-bearded — whispered conspiratorially and became silent wheneve Full story ...
PAN: Lawmakers from eastern nangarhar province on Tuesday accused some of their colleagues and former jihadi leaders of having links with illegal armed groups blamed for insecurity and corruption. Senate Chairman Fazl Hadi Muslimyar told the upper house people of the eastern province had told him that a number of illegal armed had emerged in nangarhar. Full story ...
Foreign Policy: Every night throughout Afghanistan, international forces launch kill/capture raids on Afghan homes. Over the past two years, the use of night raids, particularly by US Special Operations Forces, has skyrocketed-increasing at least five-fold since February 2009, indicating an important tactical shift by US and international forces in Afghanistan. Full story ...
IWPR: I was going from the centre of Kapisa province to my own district, Tagab, in a crowded taxi one day. Passengers normally chat to each other in Afghanistan, mostly discussing the political situation and the government’s activities and deficiencies. When the vehicle crossed a bridge or a road, the passengers complained that although they had only been built two months ago they had already been destroyed. Full story ...
Xinhua: “Yet again, a new cold winter is coming but I have no enough money to buy firewood after buying food staff with price increasing week by week,” said a resident in the Afghan capital of Kabul, Wali Khan, who came to buy brushwood in a firewood market. Khan, 45, head of an 11-member family, said he and two of his sons have jobs with low income to feed the big family... Full story ...
CNN International: From dusk until dawn, 12-year-old Fayaz toils at his uncle’s blacksmith shop in Kabul. While other kids his age are in school, he’s swinging a heavy sledgehammer and doing physically exhausting work that he knows is not meant for a boy. But he doesn't have much choice. It has been that way since he was 7, when his father got sick. Full story ...
Leadership: This October marks the 10th anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan under the pretext of self-defense. The roots of events – including the 9/11-attacks in the US – that led to the need to invade Afghanistan date back to actions during the days of the Cold War which set a train of events in motion that might just in future still reverberate through a potential deadly blowback from the present-day conflict in Libya. Full story ...
PAN: Twenty-seven people have been killed and 42 others wounded in recent Pakistani incursions into eastern Kunar province, officials claimed on Monday. A day earlier, President Hamid Karzai said media reports about Pakistani shelling of Afghan areas were exaggerated. Reports about casualties and property damage were played up, he added. Full story ...
PAN: International troops killed three family members of a former senator, Sami Jan Sherzad, and detained two others during a nighttime raid in the central province of Maidan Wardak, officials said on Sunday. Noor Agha, a nephew of Sherzad, was killed along with two daughters, aged 18 and 20 years, during a raid on their house at midnight in the Momad village of Gardan Masjid Valley in Chak district, said a relative of the victims, Hayatullah Halim. Full story ...
PAN: An elderly woman was injured when foreign troops raided her house in the northern province of Faryab, officials said on Sunday. The 50-year-old was injured during Saturday’s operation, which was conducted without coordination with local security forces in the Gozar Khwaja Abad village on the outskirts of Maimana, the provincial capital, police chief, Brig. Gen. Syed Ahmad Sami, told Paj Full story ...
PAN: Suspected militants stormed two girls’ schools in the Batikot district of eastern nangarhar province, destroying one and partially damaging the other, officials said on Sunday. The schools were set on fire in Chahardi and Barikab areas late on Saturday night, district chief, Israrullah Qarizada, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
IWPR: In the relentless heat of a summer’s day in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, most people are trying to find some shade, but 11-year-old Mohammad Rafiq is walking the streets carrying a box full of shoe-shining equipment. Dripping with sweat, the boy asks passers-by, “Uncle, may I polish your shoes?” Full story ...
NBC News: Afghan farmer Ismael Iyas Khail had gotten out of the poppy planting business six years ago, but desperation has brought him back in. The current market value of opium poppies is approximately 1,500 USD per kilogram, four times the amount he used to sell it for. As a poor 27-year-old farmer with no other economic opportunities, he needs the money to survive. Full story ...
PAN: An Afghan civilian was wounded during an exchange of fire between Afghan and Iranian border guards in southwestern Nimroz province, an official said on Thursday. The trade fire took place after Iranian border guards violating Afghanistan’s border wanted to dig a canal in a disputed area, a police officer told Pajhwok Afghan News on condition of anonymity. Full story ...
The New York Times: An itinerant preacher who had been detained for 12 days by the Afghan intelligence service arrived at a hospital badly beaten, suffering from kidney failure, and slipping in and out of consciousness, said doctors at the hospital and local health clinic where he was treated Thursday. They said they were not sure he would survive. Full story ...
The World: There was no fanfare at the White House Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. Instead, President Obama issued a written statement. One line in that statement said that in Afghanistan the United States has shown itself to be a “partner with those who seek justice, dignity and opportunity.” And one focus of that partnership is Afghanistan’s shattered justice system. Full story ...
PAN: As many as 315 illegal armed groups are still active in some northern provinces, an official said on Wednesday. A senior official with the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programme, Gen. Abdul Manan, who delivered 22 weapons to the programme officials, said nearly 185 such groups out of 500 have been disarmed in northern provinces. Full story ...
The Guardian: For all the column inches and hours of negotiations spent discussing Afghanistan’s recent past, present and future, one of the most pressing parts of the puzzle remains largely overlooked and poorly understood. The country sits on top of vast mineral deposits, which, if properly managed, offer the best chance of lifting a generation out of poverty and weaning the country off international aid. Full story ...
The Associated Press: A major investigation into an influential Afghan governor accused of taking bribes has been shut down and its top prosecutor transferred to a unit that doesn’t handle corruption cases, Afghan and U.S. officials said. The closing of the investigation into the former governor of Kapisa province, Ghulam Qawis Abu Bakr, comes on the heels of a grim, unpublicized assessment by U.S. officials... Full story ...
The Sun Daily: Operation Enduring Freedom – the dreadfully misnamed ten-year US occupation of Afghanistan – has turned into Operation Enduring Misery. The renowned military strategist, Maj Gen J.F.C Fuller, defined war’s true objective as achieving desired political results, not killing enemies. Full story ...
Time: When Fawzia went into labor with her fifth child, she knew something was wrong. She felt like her insides were being ripped apart by knives. She bled so much that her clothes were soaked. “I did not want to die,” recalls Fawzia, 25, who, like many rural Afghans, only uses one name. “I prayed and hoped the pain would go away. But when it didn’t, I asked to go to a hospital.” Full story ...
AFP: Opium production in Afghanistan, which fuels the Taliban insurgency, is set to rise by nearly two-thirds as prices soar after last year’s harvest was blighted by disease, the United Nations said Tuesday. Ten years after the 2001 US-led invasion to drive the Taliban from power, Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium, funding much of the militia’s insurgency despite an expensive Western eradication programme. Full story ...
Stop the War Coalition: Afghanistan has been engaged with more than 30 years of war with thousands of civilians killed or injured since 2001. It is under these conditions that children are at extreme risk of violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. The children of Afghanistan are growing up in one of the least developed countries in the world. Six percent of babies die at birth and 25 percent before their 5th birthday. Full story ...
IWPR: Journalists in the southeast Afghan province of nangarhar accuse local government officials of systematically denying them information. Media professionals from the area voiced their concerns at a meeting hosted by IWPR’s provincial office in the town of Jalalabad. Full story ...
CNN: Authorities in some Afghan prisons are torturing detainees into confessions, using methods that meet the international definition of torture, according to a new U.N. report. The practices documented “are among the most serious human rights violations under international law, are crimes under Afghan law and are strictly prohibited under both Afghan and international law,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says in the report. Full story ...
CNN: On his knees, Nawroz prays. He is a condemned man about to die in a brutal way. His crime: The killing of his lover’s husband. The judge: A local warlord in Kand, Afghanistan. The executioner: The victim’s father. A mobile phone video captured the grisly scene. Many have gathered to watch this act, sitting on dusty earth, in dappled shade. Full story ...
Daily Mail: Jemima Khan joined up to 5,000 people on an anti-Afghanistan war march to mark 10 years since the conflict began. The British writer and campaigner was part of a star-studded crowd who flocked to Trafalgar Square today to protest against the nation’s continued involvement in the war. Other celebrities joining the demonstration were WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange... Full story ...
The Huffington Post: Today we observe the tenth anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan. It is an anniversary that is important to many. For the American military and its allies, this is a time to reflect on sacrifices made during this long and difficult war. Full story ...
Reuters: Hundreds of Afghans marched through Kabul on Thursday, the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, to condemn the United States as occupiers and demand the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops. About 300 men and women gathered early in the morning with placards and banners accusing the United States of “massacring” civilians while denouncing President Hamid Karzai as a puppet subservient to Washington. Full story ...
IRIN: Northern Afghanistan has been experiencing drought-like conditions in recent months which have hit crops, livestock and the livelihoods of farmers and their families. Two farmers from Khoram Sar Bagh District in Samangan Province told IRIN they feared they would soon have nothing to eat, and were so desperate that they had begun selling their livestock. Full story ...
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