Reuters: The big surprise in Tuesday’s revelations of prisoner abuse at Bagram is how long these stories have taken to reach the international media, given the scale of the problem. Bagram Airforce Base is Guantanamo Bay’s lesser known - but more evil - twin. Thousands of prisoners have been “through the system” at Bagram, and around 600 are currently held there. Meanwhile President Obama’s lawyers are fighting to hold them incommunicado; stripped of the right to challenge the reasons for their imprisonment. Full story ...
UNICEF: Child labour is an issue of growing concern in Afghanistan. The ongoing political tensions, insecurity and rising food prices have put the livelihoods of vulnerable families and children increasingly at risk. In Afghanistan, as in many other countries, the child labour problem is rooted in poverty and in socioeconomic inequalities based on gender and disability. Already, 30 percent of Afghan children aged 5 to 14 are engaged in some form of work. Full story ...
Channel 4 News: Nima Elbagir travels to Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, where a programme to eradicate opium production has led to an upsurge of child smugglers. In Tsasubi, village elders told us that forced to abandon poppy farming, and receiving no help in creating alternative livelihoods, they had turned to smuggling. Full story ...
PAN (Translated by RAWA): An 18-year-old Afghan boy named Nabiullah set himself on fire on his father’s grave and died in hospital in the in Takhar province, in Northern Afghanistan. ... according to information Nabiullah was the youngest one in his family and had lost his father in recent years but his elder brothers stopped him from going to school and forced him to do a job... it is possible that the economic and family problems were causes of the boy’s self-immolation. Full story ...
The Independent: Some still think of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan as a “good” war. They may change their minds after watching the latest Dispatches, Afghanistan’s Dirty War. Last August, US troops went looking for Taliban insurgents in Aziz Abad, a small village 400 miles west of Kabul. After a brief firefight, they called in an air strike, whereupon an AC-130 gunship tore the village apart. Full story ...
IRIN: Over 1,000 families in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, have opted to return to their home areas in the north and northwest of the country because of worsening insecurity and lack of aid at the camp. Mohammad Azam Nawabi, director of the refugees’ department in Kandahar, told IRIN 1,087 families had formally expressed their desire to return. Full story ...
PAN (Translated by RAWA): A father brutally murdered his daughter and a young boy for having love affairs in Samangan province, Northern Afghanistan. He stabbed them many times with a knife. The girl was named Shakila and was 18 years old and the boy named Ghulam Sakhi was 22. This savage incident took place at 3 in the morning in Haji Umar Village of Aibak city (centre of Samangan). Full story ...
The Washington Times: The "bravest woman in Afghanistan," in the view of her admirers, Ms. Joya has continued her defiant critique of the Afghan government two years after she was suspended from parliament for insulting her mostly male colleagues by likening them to farmyard animals."These warlords are killers, drug smugglers and dirty-minded criminals who are ruining our country, with support Full story ...
Three women were killed and another eleven civilian injured in a clash between NATO and armed Taliban the previous day in Dare Peech of Kunar Province. According to the governor, the Afghan and NATO forces retaliated and a fight took place. Wahidi said that during the clash some of the bullets were fired in a populated area on people’s homes, as a result of which 3 women were killed and 11 others, including 6 children, were injured. Full story ...
PAN: Unknown assailants beheaded a university student in the southern Kandahar province, birthplace of Taliban movement, officials and witnesses said on Friday. Studying in a mosque on university premises, medical faculty student from Kabul Muhammad Mushtaq was stabbed to death just before noon, one of his classmates told PAN. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: Since 2001, the US Air Force has dropped nearly 31 million pounds (14,049 metric tons) of bombs on Afghanistan. The UN estimates that US airstrikes alone accounted for 64 percent of the 828 Afghan civilians killed last year. Those numbers practically scream the need to abandon conventional warfare tactics in Afghanistan and dramatically shift US foreign policy to incorporate Full story ...
Rethink Afghanistan: $100 billion, and for what? To bring more troops to Afghanistan without an exit strategy? To further US foreign policy that fails to address the humanitarian needs of the world’s third poorest country? To escalate military operations that directly result in Afghan civilian casualties?... Fortunately, there are ways to take immediate action and address Afghanistan’ Full story ...
Los Angeles Times: Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- Journalist Qais Azimy and a colleague spent three nights as unwelcome guests at Kabul's fortress-like National Directorate of Security headquarters this week before they were released. What happened to Azimy and another Al Jazeera producer, Hameedullah Shah, happens often to local reporters who offend top Afghan political and security officials. Full story ...
IRIN: Farmers in Afghanistan’s top potato-producing province are complaining about declining profits, mainly because of cold weather, lack of storage facilities and bad roads. Potato cultivation in Bamyan Province, central Afghanistan, employs thousands of people and output can top 150,000 tons a year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock. Full story ...
The National: Juma Gul’s muffled crying became noticeable only when she wiped the tears away using her burqa or slumped forward with her head in her hands. Speaking Uzbek, she described how she made the equivalent of about Dh440 by selling her baby daughter off for marriage. The girl’s fianc? had memorised the Quran and his father promised that her virginity would be respected until she was an adult. The couple eventually wed four years ago, when she was eight and he was in his late twenties. Full story ...
The Telegraph: The addition of Gen Dostum, who leads northern Afghanistan's Uzbek faction, sees Mr Karzai complete a controversial alliance of ethnic strongmen and former warlords for this summer's presidential elections. Mr Karzai last month defied international diplomats by choosing Mohammad Qasim Fahim, another ex-militia leader, as his running mate. Full story ...
Reuters: Taliban fighters beat musicians, shaved their heads and left them tied to trees overnight because they performed at an Afghan wedding, a village tribal chief said Monday, a sign of the fighters' growing influence. The militants have returned to areas in the east and south of the country, where violence has sharply spiked in recent years. Full story ...
RAWA News: A tacit agreement operates between the Obama administration, the U.S corporate media, most progressive U.S. liberals, and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA). All dream to a lesser or greater degree of a future social democratic paradise in Afghanistan where girls’ schools would be flourishing and small farmers exporting pomegranates. Some debate exists o Full story ...
Quqnoos: A US-led air strike has killed 22 people, including 10 civilians in the central Ghor province, officials said. Deputy Governor of Ghor province, Ikramuddin Rezazada revealed that at least 10 civilians were killed in Tuesday’s air raid, carried out by the US-led coalition forces. A day earlier, US forces in statement said a prominent militant commander, Mullah Mustafa, and 16 other insurgents were killed in the bombing. Later, Mullah Mustafa in a phone interview told Quqnoos that he is “not harmed in the incident”. Full story ...
RAWA News: Mohammad Hashim Zare, the governor of Jowzjan province in Northern Afghanistan, has been accused of wasting the aid donated to the people of this province by Turkmenistan, central government and other organizations which has been sent to the flood-affected people in that province. Ferouza Quraishi, the deputy of the Provincial Council of Jowzjan called the governor inefficient” and said the aid has not reached those in need. Full story ...
... Taliban insurgents were killed in a Coalition bombing raid in the northwestern Ghor province, a police officer said on Wednesday. Acting police chief Col. Zainul Abidin told Pajhwok Afghan News the airstrike by US-led forces in Shahrak district targeted dreaded Taliban commander Mullah Mustafa and his accomplices.... Full story ...
IRIN: Attempts to set oneself on fire (self-immolation) are an extreme reaction often practiced by desperate women who lack access to justice and protection. Anargul, 25, set herself ablaze in Herat Province, western Afghanistan, in a bid to end her misery, and ended up with burns to her chest, belly, neck, hands and face. She told IRIN about her ordeal and why her attempted suicide has worsened her plight. Full story ...
The Telegraph: Heavy weapons are continuing to stream across the Afghan border from Iran despite Barack Obama's attempts to enlist Tehran's help in fighting the insurgency, officials have said. Border police say they are regularly intercepting consignments of anti-tank mines and mortars bound for Afghan militants fighting Nato-led forces. Full story ...
The Canadian Press: The trafficking and sexual exploitation of children in Afghanistan is a growing concern, Canada's Foreign Affairs Department was told in a confidential human-rights report prepared by senior officials. The illegal marriage of underage girls and the sexual abuse of young boys is commonplace, warned the Afghanistan Human Rights Report obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws. "Sexual violence is commonly reported but remains difficult to verify," said the partially censored review, written last summer. Full story ...
IRIN: Poverty, community pressure and the low quality of education mean 25 percent of children in Afghanistan aged 7-14 are at risk of leaving school and drifting into exploitative work situations, according to a new report by a Kabul-based think-tank. The cost of education, lack of role models and family pressures were cited as reasons why children often ended up being exploited in backstreet workshops, factories or as domestic servants. Full story ...
The Huffington Post: Many Americans are profoundly ignorant of history, even regarding distant countries where the United States finds itself at war. One need not know much about Afghanistan's rich and ancient history, however, to learn some important lessons regarding the tragic failures of U.S. policy toward that country during the past three decades.... The Reagan administration sensed the most hard-line elements of the resistance were less likely to reach negotiated settlements, but the goal was to cripple the Soviet Union, not free the Afghan people. Recognizing the historically strong role of Islam in Afghan society, they tried to exploit it to advance U.S. policy goals. Full story ...
IWPR: America pledges to reduce price paid by civilians in war against Taliban, but disputes Afghan estimates for Farah airstrike death toll. Sayed Karim, 72, is now all alone. The elderly, white bearded man bowed his turbaned head as he told of the 13 members of his family who were killed in a May 4 airstrike by United States forces in Farah province, on Afghanistan’s western border. “ Full story ...
Reporters Without Borders: Radio journalist Zakia Zaki’s murder two years ago tomorrow is still unpunished and her husband assures Reporters Without Borders that the lack of progress with the investigation is almost certainly due to the influence of the murder’s masterminds. The director of Sada-e-Solh (Peace Radio), Zaki was gunned down in her home in Jabalussaraj, in the northern province of Parwan, on 6 June 2007. Full story ...
IRIN News: Facing unemployment, insecurity and lack of socio-economic opportunities at home, many Afghans, mostly young males, have increasingly resorted to costly and perilous illegal migration to European and other industrialized countries. Over 18,000 Afghan asylum-seekers were registered in 44 industrialized states in 2008 - a significant increase on previous years, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Full story ...
USA TODAY: Despite Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's call to reduce the reliance on foreign aid contractors, the main U.S. aid agency is continuing to award multimillion-dollar contracts as it proposed to increase development spending in Afghanistan to $2.8 billion. An inspector general's audit released May 11 criticized DAI's performance on a $164 million contract to promote local governance. Success, the audit found, was "highly questionable" in part because DAI "had no overall strategy" for implementing local projects. Full story ...
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