IPS: The revelation by the New York Times on Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) counter-insurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.      Full news...

Amnesty International: The German government should immediately launch a credible, transparent investigation into a 4 September airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed scores of people, many of them civilians, AI said on Thursday. ... Village elders provided AI a list of 83 people killed in the incident who the elders identified as having no affiliation with the Taliban.      Full news...

NBC News: Seventeen-year-old Shirin had been brought to the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit a few days before we met her. ... In the first seven months of this year, medical staff at the Herat’s burns unit – the only one of its kind in the entire country – said they have seen 51 cases of female self-immolation. Only 13 have survived.      Full news...

NPR: One of the factors President Obama must weigh as he decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan is the cost — not just in lives, but in dollars. With the economy still struggling, questions exist about how much the U.S. can afford to spend in Afghanistan — and for how long. Earlier this week, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the war in Afghanistan had already cost a "staggering" $243 billion.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of five districts in northeastern Badakhshan province on Wednesday said they could die of starvation due to shortage of food stuffs if roads blocked by continued events of snow avalanches were not cleared. The snowfall has blocked several parts of the highways connecting Raghistan, Yawan, Kuhistan, Shaghnan and Kofab districts to provincial capital Faizabad. Residents of these areas fear the blockades could lead to severe shortage of foods.      Full news...

PAN: Senior officials believe that 75 per cent government revenues are wasted due to administrative corruption in the country. Muhammad Yasin Osmani, a senior official of the anti-corruption department, told a news conference here on Wednesday that most of the revenues were being wasted due to administrative corruption.      Full news...

The New York Times: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.      Full news...

Time: But this time, if the New York Times charges are true, the revelations that Wali Karzai is both a major drug trafficker and that he has been protected not just by his brother but by CIA operatives as well, establishes a chain of causality between the efforts of U.S. intelligence to obtain information and influence, and drug monies that pay for a insurgency that has taken 53 American lives this month...      Full news...

CNN: A young boy dressed in women's clothing, his face caked in make-up, dances the night away for a crowd of men. The bells on his feet chime away, mimicking the entertainment and sexual appeal of female dancers. But there is no mistaking his pubescent body and face as he concentrates, focusing on every step in order to please his master and his master's guests.      Full news...

PAN: US forces on Sunday opened fire at civilians in eastern Laghman province after coming under a bomb attack this noon, killing a civilian and wounding three others, an official and a tribal elder said.The incident came a day after foreign forces in Kandahar killed four civilians in a car after its driver failed to stop. The bomb attack happened on the US forces in Safi Qala area of Mehtarlam city, provincial capital at 1pm.      Full news...

PAN: NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have reportedly opened fire at a civilian vehicle in the southern Kandahar province, killing four people including two women, sources said Saturday. The incident happened in Chawni area of Kandahar City, provincial capital, at 3pm, said provincial information department. In a statement, the department condemned the incident that happened when the foreign forces were passing the area.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The Hindus in Kabul and Kandahar suffer from not having a proper area for cremation and are forced to move the bodies to other provinces and even across the border at some instances. According to their religious rituals, the bodies of children above two years of age are to be burnt whereas younger than that is to be buried.      Full news...

CNN via TRESSUGAR: This sobering CNN video takes us into one of only a dozen women's shelters in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to nongovernmental agencies, 90 percent of Afghan women are victims of domestic abuse. One woman is at the shelter trying to escape 15 years of abuse from her husband for not being able to conceive a child.      Full news...

RIA Novosti: Afghan regions controlled by the Northern Alliance serve as a bridgehead for drug-trafficking to Russia, a top Russian drug control official said on Friday. "In the fight against the Taliban, the U.S. has used the Northern Alliance forces, which we are supporting even now," Viktor Ivanov, director of the Federal Drugs Control Service, said at a meeting at the General Staff Academy.      Full news...

Bay Area Indymedia: On October 20, 2009 Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to a November 7th run-off presidential election after almost a third of the votes he received in an earlier August 20th vote were deemed to be fraudulent by election investigators with the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission. Karzai did not do this willingly, but under pressure from the U.S. and its allies he had very little choice.But did the U.S. apply this pressure because its leaders have suddenly come to feel that the people of a country should choose its own rulers in fair elections?      Full news...

AFP: Afghan opium is unleashing a "devastating" impact across the world, according to a new UN report, funding the Taliban and other terror groups and killing thousands in consumer countries. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade that is worth some 65 billion dollars (43 billion euros), feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually, the report said.      Full news...

The Nation: Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he needs more American troops to salvage something like winning in Afghanistan and restore the country to "normal life." Influential senators want to increase spending to train more soldiers for the Afghan National Army and Police. The Feminist Majority recently backed off a call for more troops, but it continues to warn against US withdrawal as an abandonment of Afghan women and girls. Nearly everyone assumes troops bring greater security; and whether your touchstone is military victory, national interest or the welfare of women and girls, "security" seems a good thing.      Full news...

IRIN: Ahmad Wali died in a bomb blast in Kandahar city on 25 August and Samim was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul on 15 September. Both men left grieving families with little capacity to cope on their own. “We could not afford to pay the rent so we left our old home and have moved into a small room outside the city,” said Samim’s eldest son, Arif. “My children cannot go to school any more because we cannot afford their education,” said Wali’s widow, Pashtana.      Full news...

Seven-year-old Attiullah, who was wounded after a bullet entered his back coming out through his chest, sits on his bed at Mirwais hospital October 13, 2009 Kandahar, Afghanistan. According to his grandfather, Attiullah was shot by U.S forces as he was walking in the field near his home in the village of Sangissar, Panjway district watching the family's flock of sheep. The soldiers apparently shot at a vehicle that was supposedly Taliban and the boy got hit accidentally.      Full news...

The Boston Globe: Pink wigged-protesters and hundreds of other demonstrators wielding posters calling for peace converged on Copley Square in an antiwar rally yesterday. The regional gathering in Boston - one of more than 40 nationwide - brought protesters from throughout New England to shout, sing, and march against conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.      Full news...

IRIN: He sleeps in derelict outbuildings, eats dirty leftovers, wears tattered clothes and spends his days on the streets. He knows neither his name, nor his age, nor any relatives. People give him a wide berth despite - or because of - his frantic begging gestures. He is middle-aged and mentally ill in Kabul city. At least one in 10 of the over 700 street beggars arrested in Kabul in the past 10 months have mental disorders of some kind, according to officials in the government’s anti-begging commission.      Full news...

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Sometime this week, we may learn who the president of Afghanistan is. Or we may not. Imagine: As President Barack Obama wrestles with whether to send more troops to fight the Afghan Taliban, it's still unclear whether the sitting president, Hamid Karzai, won the majority required to avoid a runoff. A five-man Election Complaints Commission charged with reviewing claims of massive ballot fraud has finished its work, but we're still waiting for its announcement. If the commission waits past this week, it may be too late to hold a second round before severe winter weather sets in.      Full news...

Mirror.co.uk News: Afghan warlords were bribed to prevent attacks on Italy's troops, a Taliban commander alleged yesterday. Mohammed Ishmayel said the two groups agreed not to attack each other after tens of thousands of dollars were paid to Taliban chiefs. Ishmayel said the deal was sealed in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul. France took control of the apparently low-risk area last year, where only one Italian had died in the previous year.      Full news...

AP: Relatives of slain Afghan civilians wail next to their dead bodies in Ghazni, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 16, 2009. Four Afghan civilians, two men and two women from one family, were killed during an operation of coalition forces near Ghazni city, Gen. Khail Buz Sherzai, Ghazni provincial police chief said.      Full news...

ANI: Even as the Pakistan Army is all prepared and waits for a nod from the government to launch an all out offensive in South Waziristan, the Taliban’s stronghold, many inside the Canadian government who deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan issues are suspicious of Islamabad’s efforts. They believe that Pakistan’s Army and intelligence (the Inter Services Intelligence) are far more concerned with countering India, than taking on the real enemy, which poses an existential threat to the country itself.      Full news...

Reuters: An Afghan woman and a child were killed in a joint NATO-Afghan operation against insurgents in Afghanistan on Friday, sparking a protest by a group of angry villagers.... "House searches, killings and beatings of civilians have become daily business," said one villager.      Full news...

RAWA News: Lecture given by By Marc W. Herold, Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, on October 15, 2009 at a public forum with Zoya of RAWA, “Afghanistan: Resisting Occupation and Fundamentalism,” organized by United for Justice with Peace and the Afghan Women’s Mission, held at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.      Full news...

Arab News: The designation “Graveyard of Empires” may be somewhat of an exaggeration when applied to Afghanistan but as long as NATO troops remain the death count rises. There is no accurate record of Afghan civilian casualties from 2001 to date, but, according to a report issued by the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), published last July, the civilian death toll is soaring year upon year.      Full news...

ANI: The amazing success with which the one-eyed Taliban chief Mullah Omar has managed to regroup the banned organization after initial set backs, has raised questions whether the Taliban’s strategy is capable enough of thwarting the US campaign, or whether it was receiving strategic support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).      Full news...

The Associated Press: The head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan acknowledged Sunday that there was "widespread fraud" in the August presidential election but refused to give specifics or lay blame to avoid influencing the ongoing recount. Kai Eide appeared before reporters to respond to allegations by his former deputy, Peter Galbraith, that the Norwegian diplomat had sought to cover up evidence of massive fraud allegedly committed on behalf of President Hamid Karzai during the Aug. 20 balloting.      Full news...