The Associated Press: Six schoolboys and four teachers were injured Tuesday in a bombing on a school in eastern Afghanistan, while 30 schoolgirls fell ill in a suspected poisoning in the north, officials said. The blast, triggered by a bomb hidden inside the building, occurred as students were entering Rohi High School in the Mandozai district of the south-eastern province of Khost, said Mubarez Zadran, spokesman for the provincial governor. Full story ...
The US government is facing fresh questions on its oversight of war funding amid mounting evidence that a $2.16bn trucking contract is enriching Afghan warlords linked to the controversial half-brother of President Hamid Karzai. Investigators also suspect that some of the funds from the contract end up in the hands of the Taliban, either through bribes paid by sub-contractors or extortion rackets run by militia leaders colluding with insurgents. Full story ...
CAIVP: While the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have cost the United States over $1 trillion, 5,000 deaths, and 30,000 maimings, there is yet another painful cost that is rarely discussed by the American public. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is plaguing both active and retired members of the Armed Forces. Multiple, repeated deployments to intense war theaters are taking a serious psychological toll on soldiers (and their families), and the statistical trend continues to worsen. Full story ...
IRIN: It is well known that the Taliban, local criminals and international drug cartels profit enormously from the drug trade; that corruption is rife; and that huge amounts of aid money are pouring into Afghanistan. Less clear is the effect of all this on government power and the rule of law on which humanitarian aid organizations depend to carry out their mandate. Full story ...
McClatchy Newspapers: Although the members of Afghanistan's elite new police force have been touted as the country's best and brightest, U.S. military strategists find that they're plagued by the same problems as Afghanistan's conventional police, who are widely considered corrupt, ineffective and inept. Full story ...
Canwest News Service: A solid majority of Canadians believe prisoners detained by Canadian soldiers have been tortured after being transferred to Afghan authorities, a new Ipsos Reid poll suggests. A fat majority also say that if torture occurred, it was not only wrong but that they believe there was widespread knowledge of it within the Canadian government -- and that senior officials should lose their jobs, if that was the case. Full story ...
The Media Line: The Muslim world is full of violent, graphic and alarming stories of “honor killings”, in which young woman are killed by male family members for dishonoring the family. “Honor rape”, in which the gang rape of a woman is used as a tool of social punishment, is spoken of less. Almost unheard of is an “honor killing” or “honor rape” of a man. Full story ...
DPA: Seven civilians were killed in two explosions in central and northern Afghanistan, while one other was shot by a private security guard near the capital, officials said Saturday. Two women, two children and two men were killed in Charkh district of the central province of Logar after their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb, a spokesman for Logar's governor said. Full story ...
IRIN: Flash floods have killed over 80 people, wounded 240 and damaged more than 5,000 houses in 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces over the past 18 days, the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority said. The floods have also killed livestock and ruined fields of crops. Full story ...
The New York Times: Shootings of Afghan civilians by American and NATO convoys and at military checkpoints have spiked sharply this year, becoming the leading cause of combined civilian deaths and injuries at the hands of Western forces, American officials say. The steep rise in these convoy and checkpoint attacks — which the military calls “escalation of force incidents” — has prompted military commanders to issue new troop guidelines Full story ...
The Sydney Morning Herald: The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, current and former counter-terrorism officials say. The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by Barack Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern-of-life” analysis,... Full story ...
The Women’s International Perspective: The revelation that the number of opium-addicted Afghan children has reached new highs is a sad unintended consequence of that war. It dramatically illustrates how adult war games can doom generations of children to a miserable life. A group of researchers hired by the US State Department found staggering levels of opium in Afghan children, some as young as 14 months old, who had been passively exposed by adult drug users in their homes. Full story ...
PAN: Powerful men had forcefully captured thousands of acres of land in northern provinces, locals and officials said. The nomadic Kuchis and livestock owners also complained that the government had assigned them some chunks of green land where they could graze their herds, but the same was forcefully captured by some powerful people who do not allow them to take their herds there. Full story ...
LewRockwell.com: I was surprised on my recent trip to Afghanistan that I learned so much…about the United States. I was in Afghanistan for two weeks in March of this year, meeting with a large number of Afghans working in humanitarian endeavors – the principal of a girls’ school, the director of a school for street children, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, a group working on Full story ...
The Guardian: Some Muslims are fond of condemning western morality – alcoholism, nudity, premarital sex and homosexuality often being cited as examples. But Muslims do not have a monopoly on morality. In the west, child marriages and sex with children are illegal. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Muslim countries. I recently saw the documentary on the Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. Full story ...
Asia Times Online: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is losing hearts and minds in Afghanistan, according to a report by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) that gives a clear signal of the dangers of the military operation against Kandahar planned for this summer. Contrary to its stated objectives of protecting the population from insurgents, NATO is actually Full story ...
BBC News: Hundreds of Afghans have demonstrated against alleged ill-treatment and executions of a number Afghan refugees by the Iranian authorities. Their protest follows a recent visit by a delegation of Afghan MPs to Iran to assess the plight of one million Afghans who live in the country. Several thousand have been arrested by the Iranian authorities and hundreds are reported to be on death row. Full story ...
Reuters: President Barack Obama’s request in February for more money to pay for the war in Afghanistan is still snarled in Congress as lawmakers work on other priorities and deal with scarce budget resources. Obama has asked for $33 billion more to help fund 30,000 extra U.S. soldiers being sent to Afghanistan this year. He wants another $4.5 billion for beefed-up foreign aid and civilian operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Full story ...
Globe and Mail: Terrifying threats of dying from multiple gang rape “by four big black guys” who would catch little Afghan boys in the shower of a U.S. prison, was used by interrogators at Bagram to scare detainees into confessing, Omar Khadr’s lead interrogator admitted today. “It was a factious story that we made up” because we knew “Afghans were terrified of rape,” the interrogator said. Full story ...
Times Online: Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the American private security organisation, has claimed that his employees have called in airstrikes in Afghanistan. He also mocked Afghan military recruits for needing lessons in how to use a toilet, and questioned the value and quality of other countries’ troops in the country. Full story ...
The Media Line: Afghanistan is the worst county in the world for a woman to be a mother, a new report says. The Mothers’ Index in Save the Children’s report, State of the World’s Mothers 2010, compares the well-being of mothers and children in 173 countries and concludes that the well-being of mothers and children is at the highest risk in Afghanistan. Full story ...
The Associated Press: Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent months to the extent that foreign staff of the U.N.’s refugee agency are unable to travel to half of the country, its top official said Wednesday. The agency has to rely on local staff or Afghan partner organizations to reach tens of thousands of displaced people and returning refugees it is trying to aid, said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: Peace activists can hasten an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan by demanding a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal. A bill in the House introduced by Representatives McGovern and Jones requires such a timetable. In the Senate, a similar bill has been introduced by Senator Feingold. Full story ...
PAN (Translated by RAWA): A woman in Qalat city of Zabul was killed in a mysterious manner. A police source who refused to name himself, told PAN on May 3rd that this incident had occurred in the Kharwarian area of Qalat. According to him the woman killed was called Zakira and her body had been found this morning by the security forces near the Kabul-Kandahar Highway. Full story ...
PAN: Hajj and Auqaf ministry’s cashier has accused second vice president and seven ministers of embezzling one million of dollars during last year’s Haj ritual.... during his hearing, Noor said, “I have nothing to do with this as I am just a cashier. How can I be given bribe?” He said he was just following the orders for transferring the money. He requested the court to arrest Khalili and the seven ministers, who he did not name. Full story ...
Xinhua: A powerful blast shocked Kunduz city, the capital of Kunduz province, in north Afghanistan on Sunday, police said. “A roadside bomb apparently targeted a convoy of NATO-led troops in Kunduz city this morning but fortunately caused no loss of life,” deputy to provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Haqtash told Xinhua. Full story ...
Global Research: An average of 18 US military veterans are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides driven by Washington’s wars of aggression. The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times, citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department. Full story ...
The Associated Press: Civilian casualties are rising in Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO reinforcements stream into the country as part of a military buildup to combat the resurgent Taliban, the Interior Ministry said Sunday. There have been 173 civilian deaths in violence in Afghanistan from March 21 to April 21, marking a 33 percent increase over the same time period last year, the ministry said. Full story ...
PAN (Translated by RAWA): Some MPs have reported that body parts of Afghans who are sentenced to death in Iran, are being removed. Today’s parliamentary session was mainly about the Afghans executed in Iran. The arguments turned very sour after Sadiqqui Zada Neeli, representative of Daikundi, spoke of supporting Iran. Neeli said that Iran carries out the sentences with the consent of those sentenced. Full story ...
Los Angeles Times: Twice a week, a caravan of trucks lumbers out of this volatile northwest Pakistan city in the dead of night and makes its way toward Afghanistan, loaded with one of the most coveted substances in a Taliban bombmaker’s arsenal: ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Every time the illicit caravan makes its trip, it moves unhindered past a gantlet of Pakistani police checkposts along the Pak-Afghan Highway. Full story ...
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