The New York Times: Even the poorest families in Afghanistan have matches and cooking fuel. The combination usually sustains life. But it also can be the makings of a horrifying escape: from poverty, from forced marriages, from the abuse and despondency that can be the fate of Afghan women. Full story ...
The Express Tribune: In late January 2009, General Petraeus approached one of his team members for an update on the ongoing Afghanistan strategy review and received the unexpected analysis: “It is the blind leading the blind,” said Derek Harvey, from the Defence Intelligence Agency. He further told Petraeus that “we know too little about the enemy to craft a winning strategy.” Full story ...
The Wall Street Journal: Afghanistan's election authorities are being pressured by President Hamid Karzai and by Iran to alter the preliminary results of September's parliamentary races, adding new controversy to a fraud-marred election, officials and candidates say. Full story ...
The Guardian: The Ministry of Defence has nearly tripled the number of rehabilitation beds available for severely wounded soldiers from Afghanistan to accommodate a sharp rise in the number of soldiers who have lost one or more limbs in the conflict. The military's Headley Court rehabilitation centre, near Epsom, Surrey, recently opened a second new 30-bed extension, expanding its total capacity to 96, up from 36 beds in 2007. Full story ...
Xinhua: Conflicts and militancy had claimed the lives of 229 civilians in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan in October, spokesman for Interior Ministry Zamari Bashari said on Thursday. “Two hundred twenty nine civilians had been killed in different security incidents with majority of them in Improvised Explosive Device (IED), roadside bombings and suicide attacks alone in October... Full story ...
Reuters: The founder of WikiLeaks called on the United States on Thursday to fully examine abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and to halt its “aggressive investigation” into his whistle-blowing organization. Julian Assange said WikiLeaks would release thousands of documents this year concerning not only the United States, but other countries including Russia and Lebanon. Full story ...
Rupee News: In Afghanistan ruling politicians have publicly called Malalai Joya a”prostitute,” “infidel,” “traitor” and “communist.” But overseas, the tiny 31-year-old political activist and formerschool teacher has been hailed as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan”and compared to Burma’s jailed democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Full story ...
WSWS: Britain’s armed forces stand accused of torture and murder, perpetrated in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The scale of the abuses involved cannot be attributed to a few “rogue” individuals, or covered up by the routine excuse that Britain simply got “too close” to the United States and is guilty only by association. They present prima facie evidence for war crimes charges. Full story ...
The Guardian: One year ago Hamid Karzai was declared re-elected as president of Afghanistan, ending an election that had no legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Afghans. The presidential election last year was a fraud, with ballot stuffing, vote buying and massive corruption reported by the world’s media. Even if the independent election commission had not cancelled the planned run-off between Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, it would have represented only a choice of the “same donkey with a new saddle”. Full story ...
AFP: Mossa lives on the top of an Afghan mountain four hours' walk from the nearest road in one of the poorest parts of the world and cannot remember the last time he washed. A creeping pattern that looks like a fossilised fern decorates his right forearm -- the tell-tale sign that he has leprosy. Full story ...
Socialist Worker: The Ministry of Defence has released detailed reports of British troops’ actions in Afghanistan—and they reveal a lot about the crisis of the occupation. The reports were released in response to a Freedom of Information request made by the Guardian newspaper after Wikileaks revealed vast military logs from British and US forces in Afghanistan. Full story ...
The Sydney Morning Herald: AUSTRALIA’S decision to train militiamen loyal to an Afghan warlord is senseless and harmful to the long term future of Afghanistan, experts say. The Herald revealed last week that six men loyal to Matiullah Khan, a tribal strongman who dominates parts of Oruzgan province, had trained with Australian troops in this country. Full story ...
The Los Angeles Times: U.S. and allied forces have failed to reduce the number of civilian fatalities caused by them in Afghanistan despite a two-year effort by American commanders, internal U.S. military statistics show. Civilian deaths have risen 11% from 144 at this time last year to 160 in 2010. Full story ...
Postmedia News: The figures, reported in the recently released Canadian Forces Provost Marshal 2009 report, show reports of sexual assaults have decreased slightly, from 166 in 2008, but the numbers are still very troubling, said Michel Drapeau, a retired colonel now practising military law. Full story ...
Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET): Internally displaced households and repatriated Afghan refugees from Pakistan in cereal deficit areas in east, south, and central Afghanistan are expected to be moderately to highly food insecure. There food security condition will worsen as Afghanistan's lean season starts in January. Full story ...
IRIN: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has opened its seventh prosthetic and orthotic centre in Afghanistan to help rehabilitate permanently disabled people, but the man leading the programme says more centres are needed. Alberto Cairo, who has led ICRC’s orthopaedic programme in Afghanistan for 20 years, says he has never sat back for a moment at his busy duty station where new amputees seek artificial limbs every day. Full story ...
USA Today: Army Spc. Daus Hempker, 22, sits listlessly on the edge of a hospital bed, still shaken and ashen-faced three days after a buried explosive detonated a few feet away from him during a foot patrol. He looks physically unharmed. But the symptoms Hempker describes — a momentary loss of consciousness when the bomb went off, vomiting, blurred vision, dizziness, sensitivity to light and Full story ...
Reuters: Afghanistan’s main independent poll watchdog questioned on Thursday an unexplained increase of a million votes from initial turnout estimates after parliamentary elections last month that were marred by fraud and violence. Afghan election officials have hailed the poll a success despite throwing out as invalid almost a quarter of the 5.6 million votes it said had been cast on September 18. Full story ...
ANI: About one billion dollars worth of U.S. aid has wound up in the hands of the Taliban and other insurgency groups, war analysts and government auditors say. Sub-contractors have reportedly diverted the funds from programs meant to stabilize Afghanistan. Full story ...
BBC News: The US government has spent about $55bn on rebuilding in Afghanistan since 2001 but cannot easily show how the money was spent, a government watchdog says. The special inspector general's office for Afghanistan reconstruction talked of a “confusing labyrinth” of spending. Full story ...
The New York Times: A senior Pentagon official broke Defense Department rules and “deliberately misled” senior generals when he set up a network of private contractors to spy in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning last year, according to the results of an internal government investigation. The Pentagon investigation concluded that the official, Michael D. Furlong, set up an “unauthorized” intelligence network to collect information in both countries Full story ...
The Nation: Several high-ranking officials in the Obama administration are once again trying desperately to minimise the damage done to America by WikiLeaks, a website that released nearly 400,000 classified US military documents on the Iraq war. Without a doubt, everyone believed Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, when he declared that his website had only tried to reveal the truth about USA’s war in Iraq. Full story ...
The Christian Science Monitor: The local protest in favor of a prominent warlord is more evidence that the Afghan parliamentary election, trumpeted by the US as proof of a steadily emerging democracy, was marred by fraud and in some cases involved candidates unwilling to take defeat peacefully. While the defeat of a man like Zadran might be seen as evidence that Afghan's are turning away from leaders whose power flows from the barrel of a rifle, preliminary results from the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections instead indicate the old guard of warlords is simply being replaced. Full story ...
The Guardian: Leaks of classified war documents by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks accuse British troops of carrying out attacks on Afghan civilians. The Ministry of Defence today disclosed its version of the incidents after a freedom of information request by the Guardian. Although an incomplete picture, the details provide a rare and compelling account of British errors in the field. Full story ...
AFP: Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday came near the top of a closely watched global list of countries perceived to be the most corrupt, despite efforts to stamp out graft in the war-torn nations. Nearly three-quarters of the 178 countries in Transparency International's annual survey scored on the sleazier end of the scale, which ranges from zero (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (thought to have little corruption). Full story ...
Samaylive: The Taliban have established schools on the outskirts of Pakistan's Karachi city where sermons are delivered to woo youths, said a teenaged would-be suicide bomber arrested Monday.In urban centers, the Taliban recruit from ow-income neighborhoods. Full story ...
Reuters: Afghanistan is estimated to be sitting on $3 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits, but poor infrastructure and investor caution are inhibiting development of its mining industry, its mines minister said. "This estimate is based only on 30 percent of the country's area; there is still 70 percent we have no idea about," Afghan Mines Minister Wahidullah Shahrani told Reuters... Full story ...
The Associated Press: n Afghan-owned company bungled the construction of police stations there so badly that the buildings are at risk of collapse, undermining U.S.-led efforts to beef up the country's security forces, a government watchdog says. Full story ...
VOA: NATO says it is investigating allegations of civilian casualties during a coalition airstrike in southern Afghanistan. The alliance said Monday that 15 insurgents were killed overnight in a joint Afghan-NATO operation against a senior Taliban leader in the Baghran district of Helmand province. Full story ...
The Raw Story: Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to CNN on Monday that he has received cash payments from Iran after a New York Times report fingered his chief of staff as carrying bags of money back from trips to Iran. Little noticed in his interview, however, is that he said that President George W. Bush knew Afghanistan was getting cash from their western neighbor. Full story ...
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