IWPR: Shahbaz stands at the Kotai Sangi junction in Kabul with a set of builder’s tools, just as he does every day, hoping someone will take him on. “I have nine family members and I need to earn some money to feed my children,” he told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). “But there isn’t any work. I come in the morning and leave in the evening just like Full story ...
RAWA News: The Obama administration’s effort to persist in carrying out a deadly war in Afghanistan outside the public’s eye has been succeeding. Three means are employed: tight control over news flowing out of Afghanistan; vastly greater reliance upon secretive night raids by U.S. Special Forces; and a stepped-up use of private contractors/mercenaries on the ground in Afghanistan. Full story ...
IRIN: Pro-government militias in parts of Afghanistan are believed to be recruiting underage boys and sometimes sexually abusing them in an environment of criminal impunity, local people and human rights organizations say. In a bid to counter the intensifying insurgency, the Afghan government and US/NATO forces have been setting up controversial community-based militias, such as the Afghan Local Police, in insecure provinces. Full story ...
IWPR: They sit patiently in the lobby of the directorate of women’s rights at the women’s ministry, their sad, bruised faces testimony to the years of ill-treatment and beatings they have been forced to endure. One of the women, Marina, 20, told this IWPR reporter that her family married her off when she was 14 to a drug-addict twice her age. Full story ...
UPI: International partners teamed up with Afghan leaders to discuss the seriousness of food security issues in the country, the World Food Program said. Louis Imbleau, the WFP representative in Afghanistan, met with Afghan leaders in Kabul to discuss bilateral measures needed to address food shortages in the war-torn country. Full story ...
BBC News: A roadside bomb has killed 13 civilians in eastern Afghanistan, government officials said. The interior ministry said in a statement that the vehicle, a motorised rickshaw, was hit in the morning. The dead include women and children. The attack took place in Khoshamand district in Paktika province. Full story ...
Demotix: A growing number of Afghans — including children — are escaping the pain of war and poverty by using opium or heroin, for as little as a dollar a day. Experts say that the alarming trend is not being addressed by the Afghan government and its international partners, even though most officials acknowledge that the drug scourge threatens lasting stability in Afghanistan. Full story ...
Newsmax: After no fewer than 10 quarterly reports to Congress, 40 percent of 56 billion USD allocated to civilian projects in Afghanistan, or 22.4 billion USD in U.S. taxpayer funds, cannot be accounted for by SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. The original amount for civilian aid is being increased to 71 billion USD. Full story ...
AFP: US public support for the war in Afghanistan has dropped to the lowest level since Barack Obama became president, a poll showed Tuesday. The survey by Quinnipiac University showed voters said by a 51 to 41 percent margin than the United States should not be involved in Afghanistan. Still, the respondents said by a 46 to 40 percent margin that they approved of Obama’s handling the situation in Afghanistan. Full story ...
The Washington Post: Mullah Omar, the elusive, one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, had a heart attack Jan. 7 and was treated for several days in a Karachi hospital with the help of Pakistan’s spy agency, according to a private intelligence network run by former CIA, State Department and military officers. Full story ...
PAN: NATO-led soldiers killed six members of a family during an airstrike in eastern Kunar province, a provincial council member alleged on Sunday. But the alliance rejected the allegation as baseless. The overnight bombardment took place in the Kodi area of Asmar district, bordering Pakistan, Haji Sultan Siddiqui told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full story ...
Frontline: In a country with deep rooted religious and social norms, it is baffling to see how young boys are readily available for sexual abuse. A documentary secretly filmed by an Afghan journalist exposes the heart wrenching custom where young Afghan boys are bought as sexual slaves for the rich. Full story ...
New Euorope: Back in 2002, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly satirised the official excuses for the invasion of Afghanistan . “It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas,” she said. “We are being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission.” Full story ...
Xinhua: No education, lack of food and winter clothes. In Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, hundreds of war displaced children and their families are crying for relief assistance from the government. Currently, there are 804 families living in the slum, in west of the city, with the largest family of 15 children. “We do not have enough food and clothes. We need help,” said Wakiltawos Khan, head of the slum. Full story ...
AFP: cargo ship rescued scores of Afghan migrants in heavy seas off the Greek island of Corfu Sunday following a night of drama, but survivors said 21 more were missing after falling overboard. Rescue services were alerted during the night after the 35-metre (114-foot) Hasan Reis vessel packed with more than 200 migrants, including women and children, reported it was taking on water, said the merchant marine ministry in a statement. Full story ...
Los Angeles Times: Nine wedding guests, including a child, are among the victims. Insurgents target Western troops with the homemade bombs, but usually it’s civilians who are killed or maimed. Civilians are dying in record numbers as the war in Afghanistan grinds into its 10th year, and crude but powerful homemade bombs are the greatest hazard facing them. Full story ...
Reuters: Spreading violence in Afghanistan is preventing aid organisations from providing help, with access to those in need at its worst level in three decades, the Red Cross said on Wednesday. “The proliferation of armed groups threatens the ability of humanitarian organisations to access those in need. Access for the ICRC has over the last 30 years never been as poor,” said Reto Stocker... Full story ...
RFE/RL: More than 500 people have protested in Herat against Iran’s weeks-long blockage of hundreds of fuel tankers seeking to enter Afghanistan, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan reports. Protesters told RFE/RL that Iran’s actions have created painful fuel shortages at a time of high demand during winter. Full story ...
Aljazeera: “At night, they come out on the roads with their faces covered,” said Obaid Sediq, a resident of Central Baghlan in northeastern Afghanistan. “Many times they have stopped our car and emptied our pockets. They have guns and you can't say anything back.” The Arbakai, semi-official local militias, have committed tremendous abuses in Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan. Full story ...
RFE/RL: Early each morning, the schoolchildren of the Aqibi Silo neighborhood emerge from their homes on a hillside near the center of Kabul.But they don’t go to class. Instead, they go off to fetch water -- over and over again -- until long after the school day is done. They begin by tumbling down the narrow footpaths carrying brightly colored plastic canisters as light as balloons. Full story ...
Reuters: As temperatures drop well below freezing during the country’s harsh winter, bombs and bullets from a near-decade long war against a Taliban-led insurgency are not the only threat -- just trying to light a home and stay warm can be deadly. “We were using gas for a lamp and cooking food on the bukhari (stove) and the gas bottle was too close and got too hot,” Mohammad said... Full story ...
PAN: Hundreds of angry Afghans stoned the Iranian embassy in Kabul on Thursday in protest against the blockade of fuel tankers in the neighbouring country. Stones and addled eggs were hurled at the embassy. The protesters chanted full-throated slogans against country and torched posters of Iranian President Ahmadinejad and spiritual leader Ayatollah Syed Ali Khomeini. Full story ...
McClatchy Newspapers: For years, U.S. officials held up Kabul’s largest power plant project as a shining example of how American taxpayers’ dollars would pull Afghanistan out of grinding poverty and decades of demoralizing conflict. But behind the scenes, the same officials were voicing outrage over the slow pace of the project and its skyrocketing costs. The problems were so numerous that one company official told the U.S. government that he’d understand if the contract were canceled. Full story ...
Reuters: Afghan and foreign forces have caused more than $100 million damage to fruit crops and homes during security operations in southern Kandahar province, a government delegation said on Tuesday. Violence is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Islamist government in 2001 after it refused to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the September 11 attacks on the United States. Full story ...
IFRC: Harsh winters are always a major cause for concern in Afghanistan. The country's geography and its unstable security situation pose a huge challenge to international organizations trying to assist vulnerable communities in remote villages. When the temperature drops, it becomes difficult for people in remote areas to find food, with farmers unable to provide a solution in the harsh climatic Full story ...
Xinhua: Six children sustained injuries as a mine went off in eastern Kunar province 185 km east of capital Kabul on Monday, provincial police chief Khalilullah Ziae said Tuesday. “The tragic incident happened in Narang district on Monday when the innocent children were playing as a result six children were injured,” Ziae told Xinhua. Full story ...
Reuters: A Nato air raid in central Afghanistan may have killed three Afghan police officers and wounded three others, the third such incident in fewer than five weeks. Foreign troops on patrol in Daykundi province yesterday called in an air strike after seeing nine people setting up what appeared to be an ambush, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said. It was later determined the raid may have targeted Afghan police, it said. Full story ...
IRIN: Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from insurgency-hit Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, need food assistance urgently, officials told IRIN. About 900 displaced families in the provincial capital Lashkargah have little or no means to feed themselves and their children this winter, according to Ghulam Farouq Noorzai, director of Helmand’s refugees and returnee affairs department. Full story ...
IWPR: Nine years after Hamid Karzai came to power, Afghans have some harsh things to say about his performance. While some argue that his apparent shifts in position are the mark of an astute politician negotiating his way through difficult times, others say some of the compromises he has made have been disastrous for Afghanistan. Full story ...
t r u t h o u t: Efforts by the United Nations (UN), the US military and the Indian government to curb opium production in Afghanistan since 2007 have been largely ineffective, due in large part to the ties between the drug trade and the Taliban. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw material harvested from poppies to make heroin, as well as alkaloids like codeine and morphine. Full story ...
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