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March 3, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Green Left Weekly: The new constitution of Afghanistan formally grants equal rights to women and men. The government has also endorsed the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which, according to development agencies, is significant progress on gender equality “policy advocacy”. The first time I arrived in Kabul the women I saw on the streets were wearing scarves on their heads and those wearing full chador were a minority. Maybe, at a superficial glance, the situation had improved for the women of Afghanistan? Full news...
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March 3, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwok Afghan News: Hundreds of the protesters, mainly mechanics, flooded to the streets in Lashkargah capital of southern province of Helmand to complain ill-treatment and torture by local policemen. Full news...
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February 27, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP via MSNBC: The disarmament of Afghanistan's illegal private militias has ground to a halt and the price of weapons in the country's relatively quiet north is skyrocketing — a sign of the embattled central government's failure to assert its control, Afghan and Western officials say. Full news...
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February 27, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Australian: A SUICIDE bomber killed as many as 20 people outside the main US base in Afghanistan today, coinciding with a visit to the base by US Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr Cheney was not hurt, according to his spokeswoman. Full news...
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February 27, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A suicide bomber outside Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, kills at least 19 people, during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Afghan officials say. Cheney is safe and leaves the base soon after. Full news...
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February 26, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Age: Old men, some with tears streaming down their faces, were guided to their places. In silence they sat cross-legged while the haunting falsetto chants issuing from a PA system reverberated off the rubble that once was their homes, shops and offices in the foothills of Kabul's south-side. Full news...
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February 25, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Dawn (Pakistan): "Security has sharply deteriorated in all regions. Afghans are more insecure today than they were in 2005. This is due largely to the violence surrounding the insurgency and counter-insurgency campaigns, and the inability of security forces to combat warlords and drug traffickers." Full news...
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February 24, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Conditions in Afghanistan have deteriorated markedly since 2005, with rising violence, government corruption and misguided U.S. efforts contributing to growing unease among the population, according to a report released Friday based, in part, on 1,000 interviews with ordinary Afghans. Full news...
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February 23, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AntiWar.com: A crazy woman stalks the streets near Afghanistan’s parliament. When a warlord’s rocket killed her family during the early 1990s she lost her mind. Now she moves between the cars and people looking for it, another of the living dead trapped in her own private hell. Full news...
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February 21, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: Jamila Niyazi has received several death threats as principal of Lashkar Gah girls’ high school in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Niyazi, who oversees 7,000 girls, is a target for ultra-conservative elements, including Taliban insurgents, who use propaganda, coercion and violence to spread their influence. Full news...
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February 20, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Fawzia, not her real name, is twenty-one years old, I am twenty-two. So it seems strange to call her "grandmother". "My wife died, and I became young again!" laughed my 85-year-old grandfather. "There were some old women I could have married, but I wanted a young one. I do not think you can just divide young and old. So I decided to marry a young girl. Now I am very happy." Full news...
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February 20, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Institute for War & Peace Reporting: Forgive and forget may be a noble aspiration, but it is not playing well in Afghanistan today. A wide spectrum of public opinion, both at home and abroad, has weighed in against a parliamentary resolution passed on January 31, which would grant blanket immunity for war crimes. Full news...
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February 20, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Suspected pro-Taliban militants beheaded and cut off the hands and feet of a man in a Pakistani border area, accusing him of spying for US forces in Afghanistan, officials said. Full news...
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February 20, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan: The upper house of Afghanistan's parliament -- the Meshrano Jirga -- approved a controversial bill today that rules out legal proceedings for war crimes committed by Afghans during the last 25 years, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reported. Full news...
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February 19, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwok Afghan News: A police officer and a civilian were killed in a violent protest demonstration staged by auto-rickshaw owners in the western city of Herat against local authorities Monday morning. Full news...
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February 19, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: A local journalist has been killed by unknown armed men in Afghanistan's northwest Faryab province, said a local official Monday. Full news...
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February 16, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: Sangima watched her sister-in-law Mastbegeen die trying to give birth to her seventh child. The baby was born prematurely and there was excessive bleeding during labour. There were no doctors or trained midwives near her village in the northeastern Afghan province of Badakshan to help so her family had to watch her life ebb away; the child did not survive either. Full news...
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February 13, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwok Afghan News: Two young girls in Takhar and Uruzgan provinces committed suicide, the reason being domestic violence. With the suicide of another young girl, the number of suicide cases of girls and women in Takhar province has come up to seven. Full news...
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February 12, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR): Helmand's status as the opium capital of the world seems secure for the present. Sources inside the provincial government say this year's opium poppy harvest could dwarf even the record levels of 2006. And a team of eradicators sent from Kabul to destroy the crop is meeting with armed resistance even before they begin work, say local residents. Full news...
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February 12, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA): When Khan Aga powers up his Mercedes diesel truck and leaves Kabul for southern Afghanistan, he doesn't know if he will ever see his wife and eight children again. Full news...
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February 9, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwok Afghan News: A number of Hindus in the Kundoz province lacking shelter in the meantime claim that some of their residents have been occupied by powerful people. Full news...
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February 8, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwak Afghan News: People of Parwan expressed their concern about the increased rates of crimes and defined the main factor as the presence of irresponsible armed groups. Full news...
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February 8, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN News: Standing at a security checkpoint dressed in a battered combat jacket and leaking boots, Zaralam said he had joined the "army" because he had to earn some money for his family. "It's tough working day and night, but I earn 2,000 Afghanis [US $40] a month and get some food too," the 14-year old military policeman told IRIN in the Daman district of the southern city of Kandahar. Full news...
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February 7, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Middle East Times: It may be conventional wisdom that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but for Afghan actor Hanif Hangam, the furor surrounding the film Kabul Express has been very unfortunate indeed. He has been forced to flee his homeland because of lines uttered by his character in a new Indian-American-Afghan film. Full news...
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February 7, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Institute for War & Peace Reporting: Accusations of brutality are nothing new for General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who commanded an Uzbek militia faction throughout years of civil war in Afghanistan. The international watchdog group Human Rights Watch has repeatedly alleged that he is a war criminal. Full news...
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February 6, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP: The Philippines and Afghanistan were the most dangerous places for journalists in Asia in 2006, while Thai media suffered under a new military government and dozens of reporters remained behind bars in China, a U.S. media rights group said Tuesday in its annual report. Full news...
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February 5, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: The proposed legislation has been criticised by the country's human rights watchdog and Malalai Joya, one of the few MPs who did not approve the bill, describing it as being tantamount to "forgiving national traitors". Full news...
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February 3, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP via The Boston Globe: More than five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, the plundering of Afghanistan's archaeological sites and museums not only continues but has evolved into a sophisticated trade that could be financing the country's warlords and insurgents, experts say. Full news...
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February 2, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
DPA via TeluguPortal.Net: The United Nations office in Afghanistan has voiced strong opposition to the Afghan parliament's approval of a bill granting immunity to war-criminals and exempting them from judicial proceedings. Full news...
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February 2, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Pakistan says its Afghan refugee camps are a hotbed of support for a resurgent Taliban and they should be closed, but it seems no one in the Pir Alizai camp wants to go home. Full news...