Aljazeera: At least 14 people have been killed in two U.S.-led airstrikes in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, according to a provincial statement. In the first airstrike, two civilians and six militants have been killed in Sangin district in the east of the province, the provincial governor's office said in the statement on Saturday. Full story ...
Reuters: About 15 percent of planned polling stations for this month's Afghan parliamentary election will not open because of poor security, officials said on Tuesday, with fears of attacks rising in insurgency strongholds in the east. The September 18 parliamentary election is seen as a litmus test for stability in Afghanistan ahead of a war strategy review to be conducted by the White House in Full story ...
Sunday Times: At least five Iranian companies in Afghanistan’s capital are using their offices covertly to finance Taliban militants in provinces near Kabul, according to an investigation by London’s Sunday Times. The Iranian companies win contracts to supply materials and logistics to Afghans involved in reconstruction. The money often comes in the form of aid from foreign donors. Full story ...
The New York Times: THE government of President Hamid Karzai may be awash in corruption, venality and graft, but if you walk the tattered halls of the ministries here, it is remarkably easy to find an honest man. One of them is Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, who last month took the politically risky course of trying to prosecute senior members of Mr. Karzai’s government. Full story ...
AFP: A Japanese freelance journalist released at the weekend after five months’ captivity in Afghanistan said in an online posting Monday that his kidnappers were not Taliban but corrupt Afghan soldiers. Kosuke Tsuneoka, 41, who had been missing in northern Afghanistan since April, has been under the protection of the Japanese embassy since Saturday, and was Monday travelling back to Japan via Dubai. Full story ...
Reuters: Sayed Hamid Noori, an anchor for state network Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), was stabbed repeatedly near his home late on Sunday. Possible motives and identity of the killer remain unclear. Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. At least 14 have been killed because of their work since the Taliban were ousted in 2001... Full story ...
PAN: During Ramadan, Dowlat Hussain wakes before the sun to perform his morning prayers, but there is nothing to eat for Sahari, he says, as “we live in a cave like animals”. Hussain and his family, like hundreds of others too poor to build or rent their own home, live in the honeycomb network of caves that surround the two destroyed Buddha statues in central Bamyan province. Full story ...
Der Spigel: After the deadly German-ordered air strike in Kunduz on Sept. 4, 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised a full investigation. One year on, questions about the bombing in Afghanistan are still unanswered and many of the details remain classified. Full story ...
Sify News: The US is heading for a catastrophic rout in Afghanistan like in Iraq and should hurry to leave these countries 'or for that matter, the entire Asian continent' before its defeat becomes complete, an editorial in a Pakistani paper said Saturday. 'America is heading for a defeat in Afghanistan. Before it is humiliated by its defeat becoming complete... Full story ...
Ahlul Bayt News Agency: A Shia man named Naurooz has been beheaded by Taliban in Sai Ganj area of Ghazni. He was from Nahoor District of Ghazni, and on the way for business travel to Ghazni city. This is not the first incident in this year. About a month ago, 10 Hazara Shia from Jaghori district of Ghazni were beheaded by Taliban. Full story ...
McClatchy Newspapers: Mohammed Tariq was looking after his uncle's music shop one recent afternoon when two bearded men with turbans pulled up on a motorcycle to deliver an ominous warning. "Where is your uncle?" one of the armed men demanded of the 14-year-old boy. "Tell him to shut down this shop. If he doesn't, we will blow it up." Full story ...
AFP: Ten Afghan civilians were killed Thursday in a NATO air strike on three vehicles carrying election campaign workers in northern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said in a statement. Karzai strongly condemned the incident in his statement, confirming earlier reports of an air strike that killed election workers in Takhar province. Full story ...
Mail Online: Blood samples taken from Afghan schoolgirls who collapsed in an apparent mass poisoning showed traces of toxic chemicals found in nerve gas, the Health Ministry said today. Suspicion has fallen on the Taliban, the hard-line Islamist militia that opposes education for women and prohibited girls from going to school before it was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Full story ...
AFP: he toll of US soldiers killed in the Afghan war this year is the highest since the conflict began, an AFP count found, as NATO said Wednesday it had killed two insurgents for every soldier lost last month. A total of 323 US soldiers have been killed in the Afghan war 2010, compared with 317 for all of 2009, according to AFP figures based on the independent icasualties.org website. Full story ...
Yahoo News: OK. The roads are impressive. Specifically, the fact that they exist. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, more than two decades of civil conflict had left the country bereft of basic infrastructure. Roads, bridges and tunnels had been bombed and mined. What didn't blow up got ground down by tanks. Maintenance? Don't be funny. It took them too long to get started, but U.S. occupation forces deserve credit for slapping down asphalt. Full story ...
Global Post: Editor's note: Afghanistan's central bank moved to shore up confidence in the country's biggest financial institution Wednesday, taking over the Kabul Bank after its top executives resigned amid allegations of mismanagement and corruption. Kabul Bank belongs in part to the brother of President Hamid Karzai, Mahmoud Karzai, while the vice-president's brother also owns a stake. Full story ...
The Guardian: "Kabul is the new Beirut." This frivolous drivel fell from the mouth of a journalist in Afghanistan. She was effervescent with excitement about the prospect of Kabul's expatriate bars being even more hip than those in Beirut. Beirut – where they dance to the beat of the bombs, where alcohol flows freely and women are freer still. Yay! Kabul has finally left the dark ages and now offers expat bars for journalists and diplomats alike, where alcohol serves as the lubricant for self-congratulatory war stories and chest-beating. Full story ...
The Washington Post: Afghanistan's Central Bank has taken control of the country's biggest and most politically potent private bank and ordered its chairman to hand over $160 million worth of luxury villas and other real estate purchased in Dubai for well-connected insiders, according to Afghan bankers and officials. The intervention aims to shore up a key pillar of the Afghan economy and also of the battle against the Taliban - both of which have been marred by rampant corruption. Full story ...
Care2: On the eve of Obama's speech on the Iraq transition, the last thing anyone needs is another reason to have misgivings about the situation in Afghanistan - but that's certainly what a piece from this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle provides. Among the Pashtun, Afghanistan's major ethnic group, sexual relationships between grown men and boys as young as nine are common, according to Joel Brinkley, a journalism professor at Stanford. Full story ...
The Guardian: One of Afghanistan's most senior government prosecutors said yesterday that he was forced into retirement after aggressively promoting corruption investigations against top officials, including one of Hamid Karzai's most trusted aides. Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, a lawyer well-regarded by foreign rule-of-law experts, lost his position as deputy attorney general at a time of growing US impatience with President Karzai... Full story ...
AOL News: Has Afghanistan become just one more troubled foreign land where Americans must hold their noses and support corrupt leaders for the sake of U.S. aims? The New York Times reported today that a top aide to President Hamid Karzai at the center of the country's biggest corruption probe is on the CIA payroll. The revelation is the latest bit of bad news for the Obama administration and its ambitions for Afghanistan. Full story ...
The Washington Post: The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai’s administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials. Some aides function as CIA informants, but others collect stipends under more informal arrangements meant to ensure their accessibility, a U.S. official said. Full story ...
AFP: An Afghan police commander said Friday that NATO warplanes targeting Taliban insurgents killed six children in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan known to be a militant hotbed. The alliance said it was investigating claims that civilians had died following the air strike on Thursday against militants who were attacking a military outpost in the restive province of Kunar, which border Full story ...
Workers World: The Aug. 9 Time magazine featured a shocking cover photo: a portrait of an Afghan woman named Aisha whose nose had been cut off, allegedly by the Taliban, for resisting abusive in-laws. Time used this picture to build support for U.S. troops as a “last line of defense” that will not “abandon” Afghan women against an advancing Taliban. None of this was true. Full story ...
The New York Times: The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. Full story ...
Reuters: About 40 schoolgirls became ill and were taken to hospital after a suspected gas poisoning in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, another apparent attack by hardline Islamists opposed to female education. The Taliban banned education for girls during their Afghan rule from 1996-2001, but have condemned similar attacks in the past. Full story ...
The Seattle Times: In one of the most serious war-crimes cases to emerge from the Afghanistan war, five soldiers from a Stryker infantry brigade based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord are now charged with murder for their alleged roles in killing three Afghan civilians. In two of the incidents, grenades were thrown at the victims and they were shot, according to charging documents. The third victim also was shot. Full story ...
AFP: Hundreds of angry Afghans tried to storm a small NATO base in the far northwest Wednesday after a shootout left three Spaniards and an Afghan police trainee dead, officials said. Hundreds of Afghan men then tried to over-run the Spanish-administered base in protest at the killing of the local officer, in an incident that left more than two dozen men injured, police and doctors said. Full story ...
Examiner.com: A former American ambassador to Kabul claims that the U.S. forced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rely on corruption for his very political survival, according to the New York Times: Still, some experts said that the previous “tough love” strategy had fostered paranoia inside the presidential palace in Kabul, leading Mr. Karzai to conclude the United States was trying to push him out. Full story ...
Veterans Today: Nearly two weeks ago, some eight Aid Workers were put to death; this has further made the life insecure in Afghanistan where peace and development are most desired. Such wanton killings only further destabilise the country and the region. Today Afghanistan is home to the US and NATO forces who landed here for some hidden agendas but the declared objectives were to bring peace and d Full story ...
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