CBC News: More than six years after the United States invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul controls just 30 percent of the country, says the top U.S. intelligence official.      Full news...

RAWA: The woman belonging to Gulran District of Herat province in Western Afghanistan had been burnt with hot water, a bullet had been found buried in her abdomen and her hair had been pulled out with his hands. She says he fired on her by a pistol but she survived.      Full news...

The Independent: Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.      Full news...

RAWA: A fourteen-year old girl named Bashira belonging to Sar-e-Pul province was gang-raped by three men on February 18, 2008. One of the rapists is Najibullah, the son of Haji Payinda, a member of parliament from Sar-e-Pul.      Full news...

The Times: On the outskirts of Kabul stands probably the nicest prison wing between Warsaw and Tokyo — complete with security cameras, electronic locks, shaded visiting areas and UN-approved levels of natural light.      Full news...

RAWA News: Late Sunday, February 3/4, 2008 in a compound in Bakwa district, Shagay area of Farah Province. NATO occupation and Afghan forces carried out an air and ground assault upon a home where allegedly a Taliban commander was present. Eleven people were killed in the air strike including seven members of one family – a woman, 2 children, and 4 men. The raiders also abducted seven family members to a fate unknown. The photo from Iran’s Alalam News shows relatives mourning the dead. The names of the victims were provided to the author by the Afghan women’s organization, RAWA.      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan is sitting on a wealth of mineral reserves -- perhaps the richest in the region -- that offer hope for a country mired in poverty after decades of war, the mining minister says.      Full news...

RAWA News: A young girl was gang-raped, yet again, in Northern Afghanistan by three men. Bashira, a fourteen year old student of the sixth grade who had come to the city on Feb.18, 2008 to get the aid which was being distributed, was gang raped by three men in Sarpul province.      Full news...

The Candadian Press: Fed up with violence and broken promises, voters in Pakistan's conservative northwest have thrown out the Islamist parties that ruled the province for five years - a sign that Pakistanis rejected religious extremism in a region where al-Qaida and the Taliban have sought refuge.      Full news...

Pajamas Media Inc.: I lived in Kabul nearly fifty years ago. It was enchanting and dangerous. I lived on a wide and gracious street lined with trees. We had electricity, phones, hot and cold running water, and marble bathrooms. There was a movie theatre and an American-style cafeteria restaurant. Bazaars flourished, mosques shimmered, a thousand (all male) tea-houses thrived. Barefoot boys scurried bearing tea for businessmen all day long.      Full news...

The Associated Pres: A suicide car bomber killed 38 Afghans at a crowded market Monday, pushing the death toll from two days of militant bombings to about 140. The marketplace blast, which targeted a Canadian army convoy, came a day after the country's deadliest insurgent attack since a U.S. invasion defeated the Taliban regime in late 2001. The toll from that bombing in a crowd watching a dog fight rose to more than 100.      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan's attorney general has suspended militia leader Abdul Rashid Dostum from his government post for not cooperating with an investigation into a raid on a rival, an official said Tuesday.      Full news...

RAWA: On February 12, 2008, Amina the daughter of Said Gul of Khushk Aaba Village in Khaksafed District of Farah province was sentenced to death in a field trial by the local clerics Scholars Council of the village for running away from her home with a stranger. Her husband and other close relatives approved of the punishment.      Full news...

RAWA: On the night of 3rd February 2008 a man in Mazar-e-Sharif killed his two wives with an axe. The man was arrested by the police. According to the police authorities of Mazar-e-Sharif, this man introduced himself as Sahib Khan of Takhar province.      Full news...

Sott.net: Russian state-controlled Channel One TV has broadcast a report containing allegations that US forces are involved in drug-trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. It also highlighted the problem of drug abuse in the British army.      Full news...

Reuters: A suicide bomber killed more than 80 people at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday in the most deadly attack since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the government said.      Full news...

The Washington Post: With its fortress-like outer walls and posh interior, its sumptuous brunches and post-sauna massages, the Kabul Serena Hotel was a symbol of both progress and privilege -- a haven for foreign visitors in a harsh, unfamiliar environment and an inaccessible tower for most poor Afghans.      Full news...

RAWA: Nafisa is hospitalized with her child in a local hospital in Herat province in Western Afghanistan. She says her husband attacked her like a hungry tiger and bat her nose and then cut off her ear by a knife. She showed her child who is also burnt by her husband. Nafisa says: “I’ve lived ten painful years with my husband and he always beats me…. My husband also poured hot water over my child and she is also seriously injured.”      Full news...

AFP: Kabul is seeking an urgent meeting with Teheran about the deportation of Afghans, the government said on Wednesday, with 7,000 forced out in the past month despite a pledge to halt expulsions over winter.      Full news...

Spero News: It was supposed to be "the good war"; a war against terror; a war of liberation. It was intended to fix the eyes of the world on America's state of the art weaponry, its crack troops and its overwhelming firepower. It was supposed to demonstrate—once and for all-- that the world's only superpower could no longer be beaten or resisted; that Washington could deploy its troops anywhere in the world and crush its adversaries at will.      Full news...

The Guardian: A growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is being overlooked as an unknown number of people are fleeing their homes, caught between security forces and the Taliban, Red Cross officials have told the Guardian.      Full news...

PAN: Food shortage and cold weather compelled over 100 children to run away from Ghazni province orphanage, a report claimed on Sunday.      Full news...

PAN: At least 30 women lost their lives by committing self-immolation in Farah province this year. The figure is double as compared to last year. Lailuma Sediqi, head of women affairs department in the province told Pajhwok Afghan News during last two months 64 cases of women burnings, half of them were self immolation were registered in the department.      Full news...

Asia Media (University of California): A crowd of people wait, cowering on the side of a road. They need to cross this road to get to their homes in the west of Kabul but they don't dare. Bullets are flying from all directions over their heads. So they keep their heads down, wait. Then there is a brief moment of ceasefire, a chance to cross the road unscathed and reach home. The first to dare is a man on a bicycle. He rides off, keeping his head low. Two children follow his example and start walking, first slowly, then quickly. Next is a woman. She grabs a girl's hand, leaves the crowd and starts running. The girl struggles to keep up with the woman. Moments later, a rocket is fired. It hits the cyclist and the two children who had followed his example and set off on the road. The three of them are instantly killed.      Full news...

AFP: More than 750 people have died in the harshest winter to have hit Afghanistan in decades, the disaster authority said Saturday.      Full news...

The Independent: Afghan journalists live and breathe their country's dream of a better future. But they also live under the shadow of its violent past.      Full news...

IWPR: Personal feud becomes a test of the government’s ability and resolve to rein in powerful men with private armies. Even for General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it was an unusual sight. The burly former militia commander, atop his Kabul home, openly defied the police cordons surrounding him. Protected by his private militia and backed by thousands in the north, Dostum once again showed that he is above the law.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Afghanistan' s attorney-general says criminal charges are pending against Abdul Rashid Dostum -- a senior military adviser to the president and a powerful ethnic Uzbek militia commander who allegedly abducted his former election campaign manager last weekend.      Full news...

The Guardian: The Afghan war, you will remember, was supposed to be the "good war". Unlike the catastrophe of Iraq, from which most former cheerleaders still prefer to avert their eyes, Afghanistan was thought to be different. Senior British military figures might wince in private over their Basra humiliation, but would earnestly insist that they were fighting the good fight in Helmand "at the request of the elected Afghan government". Gordon Brown felt able to tell parliament only six weeks ago that "we are winning the battle in Afghanistan".      Full news...

The independent: Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.      Full news...