The Sydney Morning Herald: If you are going to sign a deal with the devil, make it a good one. Australia recently formally agreed that its forces in Afghanistan would transfer prisoners detained in the country to the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, an agency known for torture and horrific detention conditions. It got “diplomatic assurances” from the Afghan government: promises that the NDS won’t torture, this time. Full story ...
Associated Press: A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up among men washing in a bathhouse ahead of Friday prayers, killing 17, in an attack that showed militants can still largely strike at will in southern Afghanistan despite a NATO offensive. Roadside bombs also killed three NATO service members in the south and east, while gunmen shot dead a police inspector in Kandahar’s provincial cap Full story ...
NNI: The Afghan government is eyeing on mining industry and exploration of underground natural resources to enhance the national income in the coming years, a statement released by the Ministry for Mines on Wednesday said. “The annual income of Afghanistan through mining at present is around 30 million U.S. dollars... Full story ...
IRIN: Worsening air pollution in Kabul has forced the Afghanistan National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) to advise people to use masks or other protective devices during the morning and evening rush hours. The UN World Health Organization (WHO) says air pollution causes about two million premature deaths worldwide every year. Full story ...
World Socialist Web Site: 2010 was the bloodiest year of the now nine-year conflict in Afghanistan and the tribal border regions of Pakistan. Under the command of Gen David Petraeus, a massively expanded US and Nato force is waging a campaign of extermination against various ethnic Pashtun and Taliban-linked movements that have not accepted the foreign invasion of their country. Full story ...
CNN: Five-year-old Marjan sniffles from the cold as she struggles under her load. Hoisted on her back is a bag almost as big as she is. Instead of going to school, Marjan scavenges for hours with her 10-year-old aunt collecting trash. It is a heavy burden for such a small child but a necessary one. Full story ...
PAN: Though the Iranian embassy in Kabul has called a video clip showing some dead and wounded Afghan refugees lying on the ground as fake, relatives of the victims have asked the Afghan government to react seriously to the brutal action by Iranian border police. It is not clear when the footage, obtained by a private TV channel Tolo, has been recorded. Full story ...
Time: Gul Bibi pulls back her light blue scarf to reveal faded tribal tattoos and sad, almond eyes. She has not seen any of her three children, or any other family members, in the five months she has languished in prison. Her “crime”: running away from a husband who viciously beat her throughout their nine-year marriage, which was arranged by her parents when she was 16 to end a land dispute. Full story ...
AFP: More than 10,000 people, about a fifth of them civilians, lost their lives in violence in Afghanistan last year, an AFP count based on official figures and an independent website tally showed Sunday. Afghanistan’s interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary revealed new figures for the number of civilians, police and militants killed in 2010 -- a total of 8,560 people. Full story ...
Reuters: Worsening security and enduring conservative Islamic customs prevented almost five million Afghan children from going to school in 2010, a government official said on Saturday. The strict Islamist Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-backed Afghan forces nearly a decade ago, but many women are still not able to work outside the home and girls are prevented from attending school in remote parts of the country. Full story ...
Associated Press: Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to remove a former warlord from atop the energy and water ministry despite U.S. pressure to oust the minister because Washington considered him corrupt and ineffective. Secret diplomatic records showed the minister — privately termed “the worst” by U.S. officials — kept his perch at an agency that controls $2 billion in U.S. and allied projects. Full story ...
UNAMA: Abdul Karim (not his real name) is a nine-year-old Afghan child. He waits under the street traffic light in downtown Herat for the cars to come and cleans their windscreens in the hope of gleaning some money. Abdul is the only breadwinner for his three-member family. He lost his drug-addicted father two years ago, and now supports his family by doing this hard work every day, sometimes begging. Full story ...
The Canadian Press: Tiny patients go two to a bed and overworked doctors are on the verge of burnout in the children’s ward of southern Afghanistan’s largest hospital. A steady flow of sick kids is pushing Kandahar city’s already overstretched Mirwais hospital beyond the brink. But pleas for badly needed doctors, equipment and beds seem to be falling on deaf ears. Full story ...
CNNN: More than six in ten Americans oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, according to a new national poll. "The war has not always been unpopular - back in March, when a majority thought that the war was going well, the country was evenly divided. But by September, the number who said that things were going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan had dropped to 44 percent, and opposition to the war had grown to 58 percent," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. Full story ...
Medair: High in Afghanistan’s mountains, Yusif Habib, a father of five, lives in the remote village of Zermod-Payan. For generations, this tiny village's main source of drinking water has been a rushing mountain river. “Every day, I make seven trips to the river with two 20-litre jerry cans,” said Yusif. “And it is a long walk from the river, up the steep hill. It is very difficult in winter.” Full story ...
AFP: Fourteen Afghan civilians were killed and four others injured Thursday when a minivan struck a bomb in a Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan. The device exploded on a road between the districts of Gereshk and Sangin in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold where US-led international troops are battling hard against the Islamist militants. Full story ...
Wall Street Journal: U.S. officials in Afghanistan have spent thousands of hours over the past few years charting what they call “Malign Actor Networks”—webs of connections between members of President Hamid Karzai’s family, businessmen, corrupt officials, drug traffickers and Taliban commanders. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly released well-connected officials convicted of or charged with drug trafficking in Afghanistan, frustrating efforts to combat corruption and providing additional evidence that the United States’ top ally in the country is himself corrupt. Full story ...
New York Times: A girl was keeled over in pain, silent in her agony. She held herself tightly rocking, head down on her knees. “Sick, sick,” an old woman told us, showing us around the camp. In the neighboring tent, the girl’s newborn was sleeping. She was too sick to feed the baby. We were alarmed. It was the summer of 2009, and I was in Afghanistan with a fellow graduate studen Full story ...
AFP: Confidential UN maps show a clear deterioration in security in parts of Afghanistan this year, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, as its mission there acknowledged security in some parts had worsened. Two United Nations maps, one showing the situation at the start of this year’s fighting season in March and the other towards its end in October, highlight a particular decline in parts of the north and east, the paper said. Full story ...
The Fiscal Times: In its bid to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s teeming population, the United States has spent more than $55 billion to rebuild and bolster the war-ravaged country. That money was meant to cover everything from the construction of government buildings and economic development projects to the salaries of U.S. government employees working closely with Afghans. Full story ...
VOA: Growing insecurity and unemployment in Afghanistan is forcing Afghans into the capital, across borders and into the insurgency looking for work. Every day hundreds of men gather at Kote Sangi; one of the busiest intersections in Kabul. They fill the intersection waiting for work; they pass time talking and joking over cups of tea. Full story ...
The New York Times: NATO forces, acting on apparently faulty intelligence, killed two Afghan private security guards and wounded three others in a gun battle early Friday that could lead to renewed criticisms of foreign forces by President Hamid Karzai. Full story ...
Associated Press: U.S.-donated medicines and pharmaceutical supplies meant to keep the new Afghan army and police healthy have been disappearing before reaching Afghan military hospitals and clinics, and the government said it is removing the army’s top medical officer from his post as part of an investigation into alleged corruption. Full story ...
Rethink Afghanistan: It’s obscene how much money we’re spending on the Afghanistan War while millions of Americans are out of work. Case in point: We’re spending about $3,000,000.00 a pop on rocket launcher systems. Each HIMARS rocket launcher system costs $3,000,000.00. HIMARS systems were in the news earlier this year after U.S. forces killed more than a dozen civilians when a rocket landed in a compound in Marjah. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: You would think there would be more of an uproar in a country with the highest maternal death rates. No other country in the world loses more women in childbirth than Afghanistan. None. Rarely has being first at something meant so much loss. It's not just the women either, lest you callously chalk it up to the inevitable argument over women's oppression in a country like Afghanistan... Full story ...
The Washington Post: The president’s review only confirmed what informed observers already know. U.S. troops can win nearly any firefight. But ultimately we are no more secure, and Afghanistan is no closer to becoming a stable and developing country. No matter how light or agile their “footprint,” U.S. and allied occupying forces end up generating as many enemies as they kill, not only in Afghanistan but in other Muslim lands. Full story ...
Inter Press Service: The Barack Obama administration’s claim of “progress” in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October. But those tactical gains came at the price of further exacerbating the basic US strategic weakness in Afghanistan - antagonism toward the foreign presence shared throughout the Pashtun south. Full story ...
Reuters: Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said on Monday. Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach “well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars.” Full story ...
The Associated Press: At two in the morning on Sept. 9, 2005, five DynCorp International security guards assigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's protective detail returned to their compound drunk, with a prostitute in tow. Less than a week later, three of these same guards got drunk again, this time in the VIP lounge of the Kabul airport while awaiting a flight to Thailand. Full story ...
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