Reuters: Afghan Abdul Wahab swings a heavy sledgehammer down onto a red hot piece of metal to mold it into a truck part, sweat dripping down a face marked with grime and soot from the fire, and with a focus rare for an 11-year-old. Wahab is one of about 1.2 million Afghan children in part or full time work, the government says... Full story ...
The Independent: During the mid-1960s, America’s goal during a crucial stage in the Vietnam war was to defeat the enemy militarily. But it had no realistic political strategy to underpin the goal, and it was this which ultimately led to failure. America’s strategy in Afghanistan is now suffering from a similar weakness. Full story ...
Time: Night-time raids by Special Forces have become a mainstay of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but they have turned much of the local population in the war zone against the Western presence. The conflicting narratives over what transpired in an Oct. 3 raid in the rugged farming hamlet of Loyi Rud, near the Pakistan border, is typical of the disconnect between the NATO miss Full story ...
AFP: Four Afghan soldiers were killed in an overnight NATO airstrike in a Taliban flashpoint of southern Afghanistan, the country’s defence ministry said Thursday. “Initial reports we have indicate that an air strike last night killed four Afghan National Army soldiers who were on a patrol mission in Musa Qala district,” defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi tol Full story ...
NBC News: A crackdown on private security firms in Afghanistan has created a power vacuum in the country’s capital city, with one security contractor saying Afghan forces have become like “kids in a candy store” as they harass and solicit bribes from expatriates and those who protect them. Full story ...
IRIN: At 4am, Abdul Malek and his pregnant wife were in a rented car heading to Boost Hospital in Lashkargah, capital of southern Helmand Province. The couple decided to leave their home in the Sangeen District as early as possible to avoid roadblocks by pro-government forces or being seen by anti-government forces. Full story ...
AOL News: Rampant illiteracy among Afghanistan's army and police recruits is fueling corruption and slowing training, according to a U.S. Army official working with the nascent security forces. “Estimates range, but we think right now when we're recruiting that only 15 percent of the soldiers and policemen that we recruit are literate,” Col. John Ferrari, the deputy commander for program at NATO Training Mission Afghanistan, told reporters in a conference call. Full story ...
Reuters: A roadside bomb killed 14 civilians and injured four when it ripped through a minibus in western Afghanistan on Thursday, a government official said, the latest casualties of escalating violence in a once-peaceful area. The blast came days after a similar homemade bomb in the south of the country killed 15 people, and six Afghan soldiers died in separate NATO air strikes that were meant to target insurgents. Full story ...
Los Angeles Times: A Pentagon report due out this week will probably try to convince us that the war in Afghanistan is on the right track. And yet a poll released this month surveying Afghan public opinion says otherwise. Although the poll results showed some bright spots, after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, security and day-to-day life in many regions of Afghanistan aren't improving. Full story ...
IRIN: The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn. Full story ...
Xinhua: Eleven people including three policemen and eight demostrators were injured as they clashed in eastern Paktia province on Saturday, provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Safi said. “Eight demonstrators and three police sustained injuries as police opened fire to disperse the demonstrators but the demonstrators resisted and hurled stones on police in provincial capital Gardez city today,” Safi told Xinhua. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: General David Petraeus, in a rare public show of indecorum, last week suggested that corruption has been a part of Afghan culture since the country came into existence, which is a sentiment that is not only, from a historical and anthropological perspective, wholly ignorant, but one that exposes intentions on the General’s part that seem both dubious as well as misplaced. Full story ...
IWPR: While the world may have been shocked by the image of a 20-year-old woman simply known as Aisha who had her nose and ears cut off by her father-in-law after fleeing her violent Taliban husband, Zaiba understood the risk she faced when she ran away from home to escape an arranged marriage in order to wed the man she loved. Full story ...
The Independent: The most extraordinary failure of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million Afghans live. In a series of interviews, they paint a picture of a country where $52bn (33bn Pounds) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war. Full story ...
The New York Times: When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons. Full story ...
The Independent: Mariana lies on her bed in the Sanga Amaj clinic in Kabul. She shares a small ward with 12 women enrolled in the clinic's 45-day residential drug rehabilitation programme. At 22, she is five months pregnant with her fourth child. Her one-year-old son lies in a separate room of the clinic. He is also addicted to opium. Full story ...
IRIN: The financial costs and serious risks faced by Afghan asylum-seekers in making the long and arduous journey to Europe are no real deterrent when the alternatives are seen as poverty and political uncertainty at home, young Afghans told IRIN. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says 26,800 Afghans requested refugee status in 2009 - a 45 percent increase on the year before when 18,500 claims were made. Full story ...
RAWA News: Let me begin with the unreported news from the ground in Afghanistan exactly nine years ago, that is on November 30, 2001. The relentless U.S aerial bombing and strafing of the Kandahar area in late November and early December 2001 led to dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent civilians dying. Full story ...
The Associated Press: Several hundred demonstrators, some holding photographs of victims of three decades of war, shouted for justice and peace .... In recognition of International Human Rights Day, about 300 people participated in a demonstration in the capital, Kabul, organized by the Social Association of Afghan Justice Seekers. Full story ...
IWPR: Although production is illegal, the cannabis grown in Balkh has long been prized throughout Afghanistan for its quality. Three years ago, a successful eradication campaign by international and Afghan forces virtually wiped out opium poppy cultivation in the province. Full story ...
PAN: Afghan women and girls continue to have their rights trampled due to harmful traditional practices in all communities throughout the country, the United Nations said on Thursday. Releasing a 56-page report, the UNAMA human rights director told a news conference in Kabul that child and forced marriage, giving away girls to settle disputes, exchange marriages and honour killings were occurring in different parts of the country. Full story ...
Rethink Afghanistan: With millions of Americans out of work, you'd hope that our elected officials would be focused on putting people back to work instead of wasting money on war. If only. While it takes an act of God to get unemployment insurance benefits extended for people who lost their jobs, politicians are spending freely on a war in Afghanistan that's not making us safer. Full story ...
The Irish Times: IRAN SECRETLY poured millions of euro into the recent Afghan parliamentary elections to stack the lower house with its favoured candidates, senior government officials and diplomats have alleged. Candidates received slush funds of tens of thousands of euro each to pay campaign expenses or to bribe electoral officials as Tehran sought to install friendly members of parliament it was claimed. Full story ...
IWPR: A NATO plan to arm local militias so that they can protect villages appears to be backfiring, with these commanders harassing, robbing and even killing local residents. The idea of recruiting villagers into local defense programs is a key part of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan. But the plan, known as the Village Stability Program, has been controversial from the start, given the country's history of conflict involving unaccountable paramilitary groups. Full story ...
City State Times: In another hot issue and hot water, United States based company, DynCorp is engaging in taboo activities that humiliates young Afghan males. According to WikiLeaks and other corroborated reports there was party partially thrown by DynCorp for Afghan police recruits in Kunduz Province. During this party Bacha boys were invited to perform a so called “traditional dance”. Full story ...
The Christian Science Monitor: Nine years and billions of dollars into the Afghanistan war the US government is eager to show progress. There's just one problem, say healthcare officials in Afghanistan. That claim, also peddled by the British government’s aid agency, the World Bank and at times by the Afghan government, isn't true. Full story ...
Al Jazeera: Saudi Arabia is a key source of funds for armed groups, including al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to a leaked US state department assessment. In a series of diplomatic cables spanning several years, published by the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website on Sunday, the state department details how such groups continue to seek financing in Saudi Arabia, often posing as pilgrims visiting the Muslim holy sites. Full story ...
PAN: The Taliban were not behind the slicing off of a woman’s nose and ears in central Uruzgan province, chief of the human rights commission said on Monday. The story of how Aisha Bibi, 19, was mutilated as punishment for running away from her abusive husband and in-laws a year ago caused an international outcry. Full story ...
Washington Post: Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its allies to provide security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than they were a year ago, according to a new poll conducted in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. Full story ...
The Wall Street Journal: Kidnapped British aide worker Linda Norgrove was killed by a grenade thrown by U.S. special operations forces in a botched rescue attempt, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said an investigation has confirmed. Ms. Norgrove’s death in Afghanistan in October was initially blamed on her Taliban captors before U.S. forces said they may have been responsible and set up a joint investigation into the death with British military experts. Full story ...
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