The Associated Press: Several warlords supported candidates in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections last weekend, and observers allege they engaged in widespread intimidation and vote-buying. While analysts say it's important to give such groups a way into the mainstream, they suspect warlords will use Parliament seats to consolidate control over certain regions – setting the stage for mo Full story ...
The Australian: AFGHANISTAN'S weekend parliamentary election was a seller's market for voters who hawked their support around candidates' offices looking for the highest bidder, according to observers. Details of a thriving voter blackmarket emerged yesterday, along with more allegations of ballot-box stuffing and vote fraud. About 2500 candidates stood for 249 lower house seats. In Kabul, 664 candidates vied for just 33 seats. Full story ...
PAN: Coalition troops arrested a journalist working for an international news agency during a raid on his residence in southern Ghazni province, Afghan officials and NATO said on Monday. Rahmatullah Nekzad, working for the Al-Jazeera Television channel and Associated Press (AP), was arrested by the joint assault force in Ghazni City, the provincial capital, late Sunday night. Full story ...
PAN: In what was billed as a tactical realignment of foreign troops, British forces officially transferred the security responsibility to US marines in the Sangin district of southern Helmand province, NATO said on Monday. The district chief, Muhammad Sharif, was quoted as saying: "The attitude, service and sacrifice paid by the Royal Marines has been exemplary and has set a very good example for the people of Sangin." Full story ...
Reuters: Eight Afghan children were killed today while playing with an unexploded rocket in a village in northern Kunduz Province. Ali Abad district chief Habibullah Mohtashim said seven died on the spot and the eighth while he was being taken for treatment. Full story ...
... TV: US-led forces have killed at least six civilians and wounded several others in two separate incidents in Afghanistan's troubled east. Five people were killed during a US-led military assault in nangarhar Province. In Laghman Province, an elderly woman died during an operation by American forces and her offspring was wounded in the attack.... Full story ...
Press TV: A U.S. airstrike has reportedly left 70 people dead in southeastern Afghanistan as the war-ravaged country votes to elect a new parliament. According to Afghan officials, the incident took place in province of Paktia on Saturday when a Taliban convoy came under attack. Provincial officials say the victims were all militants, however, locals and eyewitnesses say the attack claimed civili Full story ...
BBC News: It was not the most auspicious start. Twenty minutes past the 0700 (0230 GMT) opening time, and the polling station in eastern Kabul still had not opened. But then the small line of voters were allowed in, each was searched and their voting card inspected; Afghanistan's parliamentary elections were under way. Full story ...
PAN: Taliban militants have blocked highways in several districts of southern Ghazni province ahead of Saturday's parliamentary election, residents said on Friday. However, officials rejected the claim. "Armed insurgents are patrolling major highways, stopping cars and motorcycles, telling people not to go to polling stations," said Ghulam Farid, a resident of the Qarabagh district. Full story ...
The Washington Post: Insurgents have kidnapped a parliamentary candidate and at least 18 election workers, Afghan officials said Friday, raising fears on the eve of an election that has emerged as a test of wills between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Insurgent leaders have urged voters to refrain from voting in Saturday's election, the third major vote in Afghanistan’s short and troubled history as a democracy. Full story ...
Reuters: Some Afghan voters scrubbed their fingers clean of supposedly indelible ink on Saturday in a bid to return to cast extra votes in a parliamentary election the government has acknowledged will be flawed. An ink-stained fingertip is meant to mark out those who have already cast ballots in the second parliamentary election since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. Full story ...
...violence-related incidents in different provinces of the country on Saturday, officials said. Eight people were wounded in separate attacks and a clash between supporters of two candidates in eastern nangarhar province Saturday morning.... Full story ...
wsws.org: Today’s elections in Afghanistan for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, are a travesty of democracy. The poll further discredits the puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai, who was re-elected last year on the basis of widespread fraud. The election takes place under the shadow of the Obama administration’s military “surge,” which has increas Full story ...
The Washington Post: The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it. For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is getting on everyone's nerves in the US and Afghanistan over the endemic corruption in his government. Despite promising a tougher anticorruption fight, Mr Karzai continues to protect officials from his inner circle and his family members by helping them hold on to ill-gotten wealth and transfer hundreds of millions of dollars every month outside the country. Full story ...
The Independent: Often characterised as valiant crusaders defying Afghanistan's chauvinistic culture, many female candidates standing in tomorrow's parliamentary elections may in fact be just the opposite: proxies doing a warlord's bidding. Women's rights campaigners in Kabul claim that the majority of a record number of female candidates in the vote – a contest widely expected to be marred by bloodshed and fraud – have little interest in advancing their own political agendas or promoting women's and human rights. Full story ...
The Sydney Morning Herald: THE United Nations has ordered 300 of its international staff out of Afghanistan and the British commander of foreign troops in the south of the country predicts mayhem as violence and corruption collide as 13 million Afghan voters attempt to elect a new national parliament today. Full story ...
RFE/RL: On the streets of Kabul, it is never difficult to find people angry about the notorious level of corruption in the country. Like Haroon Yakobi, who owns a small photo shop. Asked if he will vote only for a candidate who will fight corruption, he says: "Yes, of course, all the people of Afghanistan should pay attention to the fact that our last five years have been in misery. Full story ...
McClatchy Newspapers: The man who directed the onslaught, according to residents and human rights groups, was Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, an Islamist member of parliament’s lower house who’s close to U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai. He’s running for re-election from Kabul, and analysts say he could be the next speaker of the lower house. Sayyaf is among a raft of former guerrilla chieftains and commanders implicated in war crimes who are likely to win re-election Saturday to the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga in polls that are expected to be marred by coercion, fraud and violence. Full story ...
Monsters and Critics: Baraki Barak, Afghanistan - About 3,000 people including government officials and police were about to begin a prayer when a man shouted that he had an important message to deliver. The crowd had gathered Friday on Eid al-Fitr, a day of festivities that follows the fasting month of Ramadan, but instead they heard a message from the Taliban as the young man moved to the microphone. Full story ...
The Guardian: Sala Khan Khel, 40 miles outside Kabul, looks like a rural paradise at harvest time. Women and children play behind the high mud walls of the old houses, the men thresh the wheat, teenagers pick walnuts and the water coming straight off the snowy mountains high above the village gurgles through the irrigation canals. But the rural idyll hides conflict, deep poverty and growing environmental degradation. Full story ...
The New York Times: New corruption prosecutions have ground to a halt here as the result of a protracted dispute within the government over the limits of American-backed investigators who have pursued high-ranking Afghans, according to American and Afghan officials. The last arrest by corruption investigators was seven weeks ago, of a top official in President Karzai’s government... Full story ...
RFE/RL: The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has expressed concern over a report that some printing houses in Pakistan have been involved in “illegally publishing” ballot papers for the September 18 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports. Full story ...
The Daily Mirror: Claims that British soldiers smuggled heroin out of Afghanistan were being investigated by military police last night. Troops are said to have used Army planes to sneak shipments out of the country after buying from dealers. Officials said they were aware of “unsubstantiated” allegations and an inquiry was focusing on British and Canadian personnel at Camp Bastion and Kandahar airports. Full story ...
Telegraph: Afghan election officials have been offered as much as $500,000 (£380,000) to falsify returns in the forthcoming parliamentary election by supporters of President Hamid Karzai, independent observers have said. Fraud in Saturday’s election is expected to be at least as widespread as it was during last year's presidential election. Full story ...
Asia Times: United States President Barack Obama has pledged to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011, and as a part of the initial outlines of this exit strategy the Taliban are for the first time in serious negotiations with the US. The Pakistan military and Saudi Arabia are acting as go-betweens to facilitate the talks, a top Pakistani security official directly involved in the negotiation process has told Asia Times Online. Full story ...
The Guardian: Afghan intelligence officers beat back Afghan police officers who mobbed the only branch of Kabul Bank open in the capital on Wednesday, in a desperate attempt to draw money before it closed for Eid al-Fitr, the most important festival of the year in Islamic countries. Eid marks the end of a month of Ramadan fasting and most Afghans spend a small fortune on food and presents for the holiday. Full story ...
The Guardian: Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret “kill team” that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies. Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians. Full story ...
The Financial Times: In the ornate Shahista restaurant in Dubai, Afghans in traditional robes break the Ramadan fast with fare from their homeland, including “zaban” – or sheep’s tongue. Yet the fleet of tinted and customised Mercedes parked outside the restaurant shows that the diners are not Afghan labourers who toil on the United Arab Emirates’ construction sites b Full story ...
The Washington Post: The brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai made nearly USD1 million on a Dubai property deal financed with money from Kabul Bank, according to a person familiar with the transaction and a property sales registry. It was not previously known that the president’s brother, Mahmoud Karzai, had benefited financially from Dubai real estate transactions involving Afghanistan's biggest but now deeply troubled bank. Full story ...
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