Reuters: Afghanistan and its Western allies are dangerously underestimating Iran's destabilizing influence on the country, said a former governor of a border province who claims he was ousted for his criticisms of Tehran. Ghulam Dastgir Azaad, who ran western Nimroz for five years, said he frequently investigated and was sometimes an intended target of attacks inside Afghanistan... Full story ...
The Atlantic: In the year since President Obama announced his troop build-up in Afghanistan, reported events show that the mirror-image issues of governance and corruption have worsened, and that their improvement continues to pose “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” for the United States. Full story ...
Postmedia News: The Canadian military has launched an investigation into claims by an Afghan farmer that troops “totally destroyed” as many as 10 mud-walled homes three years ago in a hamlet in the Horn of Panjwaii in order to protect a small firebase. Full story ...
The New York Times: One evening last August, as President Hamid Karzai wrapped up an official visit to Iran, his personal plane sat on the airport tarmac, waiting for a late-running passenger: Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan. The ambassador, Feda Hussein Maliki, finally appeared, taking a seat next to Umar Daudzai, Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff and his most trusted confidant. Full story ...
PAN: Nearly two million hectares of state land has been illegally occupied by powerful individuals over the past three decades, a senior official informed the Wolesi Jirga on Saturday. It was no easy job to retake the land, Muhammad Salim Kunduzi, deputy agriculture and livestock minister, told lawmakers. A department called 'Afghanistan Land Authority' has been established to reclaim the land. Full story ...
Reuters: Afghan officials accused NATO-led troops of killing two school boys in central Afghanistan on Saturday after a patrol came under fire by Taliban insurgents, but foreign troops said the circumstances were unclear. Civilian casualties caused by international troops while fighting insurgents are an emotive issue in Afghanistan, causing friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and its Western allies. Full story ...
The Independent: While allied governments strove yesterday to downplay the import of the online posting of more than 75,000 classified documents about Nato's war in Afghanistan, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said they "only scratched the surface" and 15,000 more papers were still being reviewed. Full story ...
ANI: Civilians in southern Afghanistan are in greater danger now more than ever, with American-led forces mercilessly pounding Taliban strongholds in the region, especially in Kandahar province. The CBS News quoted American commanders as saying that the insurgents are now fleeing in droves, thanks to the increased use of heavy artillery and air assaults. Full story ...
Rethink Afghanistan: Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column shares a shocking statistic that shows the U.S.’s warped priorities in Afghanistan: if we brought home just 243 troops, we’d save enough money to pay for all higher education everywhere in Afghanistan this year. Full story ...
Deutsche Welle: Now the secret, which never was one, is out. The Wolesi Jirga, Afghanistan’s lower house, will continue to be run by the country’s warlords over the next five years. Former mujahedin leaders and their allies have won in almost all the constituencies. Even in Kabul, a city which at the beginning of the 1990s was almost completely destroyed by the battles between the various mujahedin groupings, the picture is the same. Full story ...
The Christian Science Monitor: Since its Revolutionary days, the American military has been no stranger to the use of paid help – from carpenters to ditch diggers – to wage war. By 1965 in Vietnam, the practice of relying on private defense companies became widespread enough within the Pentagon that Business Week dubbed it a “war by contract.” Full story ...
IWPR: Sweating heavily, his clothes blackened with dirt and grease, Khowajaha Muzamil struggles to raise a hammer above his head with his thin arms. Clearly exhausted, the 13-year-old still has many hours to go before he could rest. Although he attends school in the morning, he comes to work in a mechanic’s workshop after lunch every day and stays there until late at night. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: The New York Times just published a story under the headline, "Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region" that could not include more Pentagon talking points if it were written by General David Petraeus himself. In both the broad outline of the story and in the particulars, the Times conveys a deceptive picture of the state of the conflict and obscures the continued deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan. Full story ...
Sky News: It is an extraordinary meeting. There is me on one side of the room and an array of women all piled on top of an Afghan bed on the other. They look at me. I mean really look at me. I am probably one of the few Westerners they have ever seen, maybe the only one. Then the questions come. “Are you married? Do you have any children? Have you any boys? Have you thought of becoming a Muslim? Why do you leave your children? How old are you?” Full story ...
CNN: A vehicle headed to a wedding party and a school bus carrying students hit insurgent-planted bombs in southwestern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing 22 people and wounding 20, authorities said. The incidents, which occurred in different districts of Nimruz province, are the latest in Afghanistan to result from improvised explosive devices -- regarded as the top killer of civilians in the war-weary nation. Full story ...
Telegraph: “We are not like a government, we depend on individuals,” a Taliban commander told Sky News. “We get donations from our Muslim brothers in Britain for jihad and they help us. It is the duty of all Muslims to pay towards fighting a jihad. And this is how we get our money and buy our weapons and carry on fighting.” Full story ...
Fox News: Two weeks ago Afghan officials intercepted a shipment of Iranian weapons en route to the Taliban in the Afghan province of Nimroz. “The police chief of Nimroz announced that they had intercepted a couple tons of Iranian explosives marked as food and toys,” said Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, who just returned from a two week visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Full story ...
The Wall Street Journal: A U.S. soldier is being held for the alleged shooting of an Afghan detainee found dead in his holding cell in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, according to a statement from U.S. officials. The motive behind the shooting is unclear, but the statement from U.S. Forces in Afghanistan said the deceased detainee was "a senior leader of the Taliban network in Arghandab" district, Kandahar. Full story ...
The Los Angeles Times: Mullah Tractor wore an orange jumpsuit, signaling maximum security. He looked to be about 60 years old, with thin downturned lips, a contoured nose that might once have been broken and a short black-and-white beard. His real name is Gul Shah Wazir, and he is in U.S. detention in Afghanistan, accused of being a member of the Taliban. Full story ...
PAN: Residents of northern Baghlan province have accused tribal militias, hired by government, of forcefully taking usher from them. Nearly 100 residents from different districts on Sunday gathered in front of provincial police headquarters in the capital city, Pul-i-Khumri, asking police to help them against the militias. One of the residents, Juma Khan, 50, said militias forcefully took money from residents in Khwaja Khan village. Full story ...
IRIN: It is the season for harvesting pomegranates - a major fruit crop in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan - but some farmers say fighting there has badly affected their farms and livelihoods. “My pomegranate garden has been totally destroyed,” said Obaidullah, a farmer in Kandahar’s Arghandab District where NATO-led forces have launched a major anti-Taliban operation. Full story ...
The Wall Street Journal: The Taliban's influence in northern Afghanistan has expanded in recent months from a few hotspots to much of the region, as insurgents respond to the U.S.-led coalition's surge in the south by seizing new ground in areas once considered secure. Taliban militants stop traffic nightly at checkpoints on the road from Kabul to Uzbekistan, just outside Baghlan province's cap Full story ...
PAN: Ten out of 100 families in northern Balkh province earn a living with the assistance of others while 80 percent people are living in extreme poverty, an official said on Tuesday. Dr. Fardin, food in charge at the ActionAid International Organisation in the north, told a press conference in Mazar-i-Sharif that the 10 families out 100 included widows, disables, orphans and labourers who fulfilled their daily life needs with the help of others. Full story ...
CNN: The grease-covered orange overalls can't hide 14-year-old Nazer Ahmad's frail frame. As he leans under the hood of a wrecked car, torn plastic sandals on his feet, I know I cannot possibly understand the life this young boy is forced to lead in war-torn Afghanistan -- where jobs are few, pay is appalling, and young children must work rather than go to school and play with their friends. Full story ...
ABC News Radio: A videotape obtained by ABC News appears to show fraud in last month's Afghanistan elections. Cell phone video captures underage voters and ballot stuffing, and may mean thousands of votes may have to be thrown out. One part of the video shows someone in a police uniform watching as one person casts dozens of fake ballots, while another folds them into the ballot box. Full story ...
Time: Details of the gruesome crimes in Afghanistan that have resulted in 12 U.S. Army soldiers facing trial at a base near Seattle have been slowly making their way into the public domain. Dozens of photos to be introduced as evidence in the case allegedly show men from a self-styled "kill team" accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport posing beside charred and mutilated bodies, from whi Full story ...
BBC News: A woman accused of murdering her mother-in-law has been killed by Taliban in the eastern Afghan province of Ghazni, local officials say. The mother-in-law was pushed into a bread oven by two of her daughters-in-law after a spat on Monday, they say. The incident took place in the remote Abe Band district, 60km (37 miles) east of the provincial capital Ghazni City. Full story ...
BNO NEWS: The Taliban publicly executed an alleged murderer in front of a large crowd at a bazaar in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, according to a local news report on Saturday. The Pajhwok Afghan News (PAN) agency reported that the public execution was carried out at the Sebaka bazaar in Chak district of Wardak Province. The man, identified as Omar from neighboring Saydabad district, was accused of killing a man in Chak district. Full story ...
Green Left Weekly: On October 17, 2001, the Liberal/National Coalition government of John Howard deployed Australian troops to Afghanistan, just nine days after the US had begun bombing one of the most poverty-stricken and war-weary nations on Earth. The then newly-formed Socialist Alliance responded to this attack and its reputed catalyst, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington... Full story ...
The Nation: The Afghan War has now entered its 10th year. It has become the longest US war. As of 7 October 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the human cost of the Afghan War has been estimated as about 4.9 million violent deaths or non-violent avoidable deaths from Occupier-imposed deprivation. Full story ...
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