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May 1, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: Twice a week, a caravan of trucks lumbers out of this volatile northwest Pakistan city in the dead of night and makes its way toward Afghanistan, loaded with one of the most coveted substances in a Taliban bombmaker’s arsenal: ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Every time the illicit caravan makes its trip, it moves unhindered past a gantlet of Pakistani police checkposts along the Pak-Afghan Highway. Full news...
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May 1, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: More than 30 years after I watched the Soviet army slithering in their great T-72s past their new headquarters at Bagram north of Kabul, more than nine years since the first Americans took over the same airbase, I have gazed at last upon the treasures of Bagram. Full news...
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May 1, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Two explosions in the restive southern Helmand and western Farah provinces of Afghanistan on Friday wounded over a dozen people, mostly civilians, the Interior Ministry said in a press release on Saturday. In the first incident, according to the press release, militants planted explosive device on a bicycle and detonated it in Aziz Khan village of Musa Qala district, Helmand province, injuring seven civilians. Full news...
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April 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: What to do with Afghanistan? Despite President Obama's 30,000 strong troop surge and millions of dollars being poured in, the Afghan bus has not managed to extricate itself from the ditch it has been stuck in. The Pentagon's report to Congress yesterday underlines what most people already know: the population "sympathizes with or supports the Afghan government" in only 24% of the key parts of Afghanistan. Full news...
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April 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: INTERNATIONAL troops opened fire on a car in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing two women and a girl after mistaking them for Taleban, the Afghan interior ministry said. The victims were among five civilians who were travelling on a highway in Zabul province when they came under fire, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. Full news...
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April 29, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
WSWS.org: The Times reported that “more than a dozen military and civilian officials directly involved in the Kandahar offensive” had agreed to speak about the special forces’ activities because it would help “scare off insurgents” before the bulk of American troops move into Taliban-held areas of the city. This claim is either patent nonsense or deliberate deception. The Taliban do not require an article in the American media to inform them that “large numbers” of their fighters are being killed or captured. Full news...
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April 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: At least 12 civilians, including women and children, have been killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan. Local officials said the improvised bomb struck a passenger vehicle Wednesday in the Tani district of Khost province. In southern Afghanistan, NATO says one of its soldiers was killed in a roadside bombing Wednesday. Full news...
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April 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN (Translated by RAWA): 22 children under the age of five and 15 children below the age of one die every hour. And every 30 minutes, a mother dies during childbirth. These statistics were announced by Dr. Suraya Dalil, Deputy Minister for Policy and Planning and Acting Minister of Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in a press conference in Kabul with Dr. Eric Laroche, Assistant Director-General Health Action in Crises, World Health Organization (WHO). Full news...
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April 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AOL News: For girls in Afghanistan, getting an education has always been difficult, if not impossible. But their struggle appears worse than ever recently as a series of poison gas attacks on girls' schools has sent at least 88 girls, some as young as 7, to the hospital. The attacks in Kunduz province, in the north of the country, come amid heightened Taliban influence in the region, raising fears that ultra-conservative elements in society are becoming bolder in their efforts to exert influence over social behavior. Full news...
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April 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Morning Star: Britain has long known that Afghanistan is accused of using torture but is still handing over prisoners, new evidence in a legal action against the British government claims. Peace campaigner Maya Evans is bringing a judicial review against the Defence Secretary over allegations that British troops were complicit in the torture of Afghan prisoners by handing them over to the notorious Afghan Security Service (NDS). Full news...
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April 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Toronto Star: After all that has happened in Afghanistan, all the innocents that have been murdered, villages destroyed, women kidnapped and sold into the sex trade, little boys and girls getting kidnapped and also sold into the sex trade, people like Allan Woods are still trying to convince us that we Canadians are fighting a just war. Full news...
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April 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Around 1,000 people Sunday poured onto the streets against the killing of three members of a family in a coalition operation in the central province of Logar, the second demonstration against US troops in two days. The angry residents, chanting slogans against the United States and the provincial administration, blocked the Logar-Gardez highway in the Nasir village near Pul-i-Alam and burnt 16 tankers carrying fuel for NATO-led forces. Full news...
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April 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Gazette: The roadside bombs of Afghanistan are brutal and destructive, though the injuries they cause, both in brain and body, can be subtle. Since 2003, the Taliban's consistent use of such explosives has killed 84 of Canada's 142 fallen soldiers, and has made amputees of many others. Often, the bombs tear apart soldiers and local Afghans alike. They have been known to lift 70-tonne tanks off the ground. Full news...
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April 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of angry residents took to the streets against the killing of five civilians in a predawn US-led coalition operation in the central province of Logar on Friday. But the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) called the dead militants, who were shot dead in a fierce gunbattle with the combined force. Also, two US service members died of wounds suffered in the firefight. Full news...
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April 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
OpedNews.com: As all wars are not morally objectionable, not all wars are permissible. However, even in the situation where use of force becomes permissible, there are certain essential and universally accepted principles that need to be abided... Judging from the above principles, the eight-year-old US war against Afghanistan trampled every accepted norms and standard conduct of war; a war bereft of reason and uncalled for. Full news...
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April 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: As with so many of the Helmand towns where the British are present the bazaar in Sangin is officially "thriving". Indeed, recent visitors have to admit that there are signs of commerce in the long thin strip of shops. But the rest, says David Gill, a photographer who visited Sangin three times last year, is like "a ghost town in Death Valley where you drive through and all you see is a sign flapping in the wind". Full news...
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April 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Asia Times: On his first day in office, President Barack Obama promised that he would close the George W Bush-era prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "as soon as practicable" and "no later than one year from the date of this order". The announcement was met with relief, even joy, by those, like me, who had opposed the very existence of Guantanamo on the grounds that it represented a legal black hole where the distinction between guilt and innocence had been obliterated, respect for the rule of law was mocked, and the rights of prisoners were dismissed out of hand. We should have known better. Full news...
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April 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA News: The figures cited by McChrystal suggest a large increase (though very small absolute numbers) of civilians killed by NATO actions, when in fact the level of deaths has remained stable. Secondly, the NATO figures are gross, “fantasy” undercounts, e.g., during the first three months of 2010 they captured at most 39% of the actual deaths. Interestingly, the NATO figures for 2010 and the UNAMA ones for the year 2009 reveal the same magnitude (@ 60%) of undercounting. Full news...
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April 20, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
DPA: Afghan officials said Tuesday that NATO forces shot dead four Afghan school students, but NATO said those killed were Taliban militants and their associates. The incident happened around three kilometres south of Khost city, the capital of the south-eastern province of Khost, on Monday night, Mubarez Mohammad Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor, told the German Press Agency dpa. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Veterans Today Network: As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple “drum beating” for an Israeli attack in Iran to get at the gas supplies needed for her secret pipeline deals, her “shill” in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is simply no longer credible. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Telegraph: Government denials of such abuse are the result of a "head in the sand" attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. They are the latest allegations of British complicity in torture following investigations into MI5 and MI6. Human rights lawyers have assembled details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, electrocution, and whipping with rubber cables. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FOX News: In recent weeks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s anti-western behavior has become well known to even the most casual observers of Afghanistan. First, he stood next to, and appeared to agree with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian President called America and its international allies fighting in Afghanistan “occupiers.” Days later, Karzai told supporters in a closed door meeting he might consider joining the Taliban if his western partners didn’t stop pushing him to clean up government corruption and interfering in Afghan affairs. Full news...
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April 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
In late 2001, after helping kick the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan, two militias allied with the United States raped and plundered their way through your villages. One was the ethnic Uzbek militia of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; the other was made up of ethnic Hazara followers of the warlord Muhammad Mohaqiq. They killed your men, slaughtered and stole your livestock, pillaged your homes, and violated your sisters, mothers, and daughters. Some of them took the time to explain why they had picked you as their victims: Because you are Pashtun, the ethnic group that made up most of the Taliban. Full news...
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April 17, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: With a U.S.-led offensive only weeks away to clear the Taliban from this key southerncity, many residents blame foreign troops and the Afghan government as much as the Taliban for pushing Kandahar toward the brink of chaos - the very thing the military hopes to reverse. The goal of the operation by U.S., NATO and Afghanforces is to shore up a local administration that nominally controls the city and break the grip of warlords and influence peddlers, who are thought to have allowed the Taliban in. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Winnipeg Free Press: The system by which Afghans and their families are compensated if they are injured in an American military attack has increasingly become a source of outrage among Afghans who say they feel a price is being put on their lives. The practice has come under particular criticism since the major U.S. offensive in Helmand province. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Toronto Star: Did Canadian troops use Afghanistan’s notorious security services as “subcontractors for abuse and torture?” That’s what the Commons committee on Afghanistan heard this week from Ahmadshah Malgarai, an Afghan-Canadian who worked as an interpreter in Kandahar. “If the (Canadian) interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to NDS (the National Directorate of Security) for more questions, Afghan style,” Malgarai told the committee Wednesday. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Express Tribune: The US is improvising its policy in Afghanistan based on this review and on Obama’s subsequent policy interventions, including the commitment to increase the force level in Afghanistan by another 60,000 troops during 2010. Despite these changes no major improvement has occurred in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban have become more aggressive and are stronger than before. Full news...
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April 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: In Koshan, along western Afghanistan's border with Iran, Arbab Zarif has just buried his brother. "Look how they hurt us," he says. "Look what is happening to us." Zarif's brother was executed in Iran for allegedly trafficking drugs. He says he had no defense lawyer and that Iranian authorities then added insult to tragedy. Full news...
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April 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: A huge explosion took place in Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan late Thursday, killing at least 11 people and injuring 18 others. Xinhua's reporter saw military helicopters hovering over the bombing site, which is located at the city's business center called Aljadid Market. A police official who insisted on anonymity told Xinhua that it was a suicide car bombing attack. Full news...
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April 14, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP: A gunman lying in wait shot and killed an 18-year-old woman as she left her job at a U.S.-based development company Tuesday, casting a spotlight on a stepped-up campaign of Taliban intimidation against women .... Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power, fear again dominates the lives of many young women and girls in the violent south... Full news...