-
March 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA News: Future U.S wars in the Third World will involve massive use of drones to police the territory, employ local satrap forces (like those of Karzai’s Afghan Army) and once the territory has been pacified sufficiently, the deployment of “Government Ready-to-Rule (GRR)” kits. ... it represents the quintessential American way of “solving” problems with technological short-cuts, a military effort begun in 1942 with the Allied fire-bombing of German cities. The current American war in Afghanistan is a harbinger of what is to come, America’s electronic, troop-less war. Full news...
-
March 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: United Nations aid agencies are increasingly concerned about the number of children from Afghanistan migrating across Europe alone. Latest figures from the UN Refugee Agency show that the number of Afghan children under 18 who applied for asylum in Europe last year rose by 64%, from 3,800 to more than 6,000. Full news...
-
February 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
This is a story about the women and children of Badam Bagh, the only women’s prison in Kabul. It is home to some 90 inmates, many of them mothers. Eighteen-year-old Krishma is one of them..... Fawzia, inmate: “It’s been two months since my arrest. I’m in here because after my husband had hit me, I got angry so I left my house and went to stay with my sister-in-law.” ... In another country, Fawzia and many of the women here would not even be in jail. They would be considered victims rather than perpetrators. Full news...
-
February 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Australian: Hekmatyar is being feted with offers that reportedly include ministries and governorships for his party, Hezb-e-Islami, in a future Afghan regime. The devils with whom Kabul and Washington must now deal are largely of America's own making, assisted by its long-time ally, Pakistan. During the US-backed jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Hekmatyar led one of seven mujaheddin parties that were lavishly bankrolled by the CIA. Full news...
-
February 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP: Suicide bombers mounted attacks in the heart of Kabul today, triggering a series of explosions and gun battles that killed at least 17 people, including Indian government officials. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying five suicide bombers conducted the early-morning attacks on two buildings in an area that is home to small residential hotels used by foreigners. An Italian diplomat was also among the victims, according to the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini. Full news...
-
February 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan -- often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport -- as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money's origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal. Full news...
-
February 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Moves by the Afghan president to take control of a key election watchdog have dismayed diplomats and analysts who said today there is now even less chance that future polls will be free and fair. The president Hamid Karzai has changed a law to give himself control of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), a body that threw out more than half a million votes cast for him in last year’s fraud-tainted poll. Full news...
-
February 24, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
DPA: The United Nations said Wednesday that 346 children were killed in Afghanistan last year, more than half of them by NATO forces, mostly in airstrikes. "In 2009, 346 children were killed," Radhika Coomaraswamy, the special representative of the UN secretary general for children and armed conflict, said in Kabul after a seven-day visit the country. Full news...
-
February 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Times: Relatives of 27 people killed when Nato aircraft bombed a civilian convoy in southern Afghanistan have demanded that foreign forces leave the country. Afghan officials said that at least four women and a child were among the dead. Twelve other civilians were wounded when three minibuses were attacked on Sunday in a remote part of Uruzgan province. The local governor and the Interior Minister said that all of the victims were civilians. Full news...
-
February 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Afghanistan’s biggest private bank -- founded by the Islamic nation’s only world-class poker player -- celebrated its fifth year in business last summer .... Less publicly, Kabul Bank's boss has been handing out far bigger prizes to his country’s U.S.-backed ruling elite: multimillion-dollar loans for the purchase of luxury villas in Dubai by members of President Hamid Karzai’s family, his government and his supporters. Full news...
-
February 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ABC News: Sexual slavery involving boys as young as 10 is being condoned and in many cases protected by authorities in northern Afghanistan. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi has filmed police attending a party where a young boy is the "entertainment". The police shown on the video include one officer from the youth crime squad. Such parties are illegal under Afghanistan law and with good reason. Full news...
-
February 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: A NATO airstrike in Afghanistan mistakenly killed 27 civilians, the government said on Monday, hurting a campaign to win over the local population and defeat Taliban insurgents. The Afghan cabinet condemned the killings as "unjustifiable" after an aircraft fired on civilians, mistaking them for insurgents, in the south near the border of Uruzgan and Dai Kondi provinces. Full news...
-
February 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Police found a married girl stabbed in the neck inside a ruined house in northwestern Ghor province late Saturday evening, officials said on Sunday. The 16-year-old, identified as Shakar, was shifted to a nearby health facility, where doctors say the girl is still in comma. Doctors at Ghor Civil Hospital said the teenager was in a critical condition after she was stabbed in the neck. Full news...
-
February 20, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: Seven Afghan policemen have been mistakenly killed in a Nato air strike in the north of the country. The government said an air strike had been ordered after a patrol including Nato and Afghan soldiers and police was attacked by the Taliban in the northern province of Kunduz. But the air strike instead killed seven of the policemen and injured two others. Full news...
-
February 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA News: According to reports by Afghan media, ordered by a local warlord called Fazl Ahad, two Afghan women were publicly flogged in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan. Spokesman of Ghor’s Governor, Abdul Hai Khatibi said these women were forcibly married in Dolina district, but later they both ran away from their husbands' houses. Police in Heart arrested the two and returned them to their village and handed over to their husbands. Full news...
-
February 17, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The bodies of a dozen people killed in a NATO air strike in Marja district two days ago were handed over to their families. A Marja dweller, who visited the hospital to receive the bodies of his relatives, said he lost 10 members of his family in the strike. He added his parents and a young brother were among his other family members dead in the assault. "No one attacked foreign forces from our house and there were no fighters hiding in our house," he explained. Full news...
-
February 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: More civilians have been killed in a Taliban stronghold in southern Helmand province during a huge onslaught that NATO and Afghan officials say is aimed at protecting residents and bringing them prosperity.... villagers accused the international troops of killing at least 15 residents in the Washer district of Helmand alone -- the scene of an ongoing joint sweep involving 15,000 Afghan and foreign forces. Full news...
-
February 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Huffington Post: It will be argued that the government of the United States did not decide to kill these five children specifically, and that's absolutely true. The U.S. government did not decide to kill these particular children; it only decided to kill some Afghan civilians, chosen randomly from Marja's civilian population, when it decided to launch its military assault. Full news...
-
February 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
firedoglake.com: ... even the reporters there, on the ground, directly interacting with and personally interviewing the military are getting contradictory reports of what’s going on. Chandrasekaran and Phillips, for example, both datelined their stories from Marjeh, and they couldn’t be more different: Chandrasekaran says it’s less than 4,000 troops encountering heavy and unexpected resistance, while Phillips says it’s almost 10,000 troops experiencing light and expected resistance. Full news...
-
February 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Despite assurances from NATO and Afghan officials to minimize the collateral damage during an ongoing offensive in southern Helmand province, a dozen civilians were killed on Sunday."Two rockets launched at insurgents firing upon Afghan and ISAF forces impacted approximately 300 meters off their intended target, killing 12 civilians in Nad Ali district," the International Security Assistance Force said. Full news...
-
February 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Morning Star: An Afghan provincial official and villagers has accused US special forces on Friday of killing five civilians in a raid on a home near Gardez in Paktia province. Gardez provincial council member Shahyesta Jan Ahadi said: "On Thursday night, the Americans conducted an operation in a house and killed five innocent people, including three women. The people are so angry." Full news...
-
February 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: Osama bin Laden's favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father's cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever travelled the other way. Osama's vision can't even inspire his own kids. But Omar bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause – and we are giving it to him. Full news...
-
February 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: Four people found dead in a southeastern Afghan compound appear to be victims of an honor killing, a senior U.S. military official said on Friday. The bodies were discovered during an operation by Afghan and NATO-led forces in Paktia province, a volatile region along the border of Pakistan. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the bodies of two men and two women were found Full news...
-
February 11, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Taliban fighters who have maimed and murdered but who lay down their weapons will be given immunity from prosecution according to a law that came into force without announcement in the weeks running up to last month's London conference on Afghanistan. The reconciliation and general amnesty law also gives immunity from prosecution to all of the country's warlords, the former factional leaders, many of whom are hated for the atrocities they committed during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s. Full news...
-
February 11, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CounterPunch: Perhaps, there was once a time when most westerners could pretend that the US-led onslaught against the Afghan people was a good thing. Perhaps they convinced themselves that because the government of that country had allowed Osama Bin Laden to live in the mountains there that there was reason enough to attack his neighbors and destroy what remained of their nation. Full news...
-
February 11, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
HealthCanal.com: Between 2002 and 2008, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were newly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder received the recommended course of care for their condition at VA health facilities, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. Full news...
-
February 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Danger Room: That’s according to Colonel Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the U.S. military effort there, and dogged researcher Nick Turse. About 400 belong to NATO and American forces; the rest are in the hands of the Afghan National Army. The number will almost certainly grow, as more NATO troops execute top commander General Stanley McChrystal’s dictum to live among the local population. Full news...
-
February 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Rescuers recovered the bodies of 165 people killed by a series of avalanches on a treacherous Afghan mountain pass in one of the country's worst such disasters, an official said on Wednesday. An AFP photographer on the scene said massive avalanches had pushed vehicles from the road into the deep valley below, with at least nine passenger cars and two large buses lying upside down on the valley floor. Full news...
-
February 9, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Amnesty International: Amnesty International calls on Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan Parliament to immediately suspend controversial legislation that will give immunity from prosecution for serious violations of human rights, including war crimes and crimes against humanity committed, in the past 30 years. Full news...
-
February 9, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Le Monde diplomatique: A worrying two-thirds of the Pentagon’s personnel in Afghanistan are private military contractors, unaccountable to military law or ethics, swaggeringly overbearing, and not in any hurry to help improve the poor security situation that assures their firms’ current and future profits. The Central Intelligence Agency hired staff from a private military company called Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret programme to track down and assassinate al-Qaida leaders, according to the New York Times of 19 August 2009. Full news...