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December 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Canadian Press: Tiny patients go two to a bed and overworked doctors are on the verge of burnout in the children’s ward of southern Afghanistan’s largest hospital. A steady flow of sick kids is pushing Kandahar city’s already overstretched Mirwais hospital beyond the brink. But pleas for badly needed doctors, equipment and beds seem to be falling on deaf ears. Full news...
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December 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNNN: More than six in ten Americans oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, according to a new national poll. "The war has not always been unpopular - back in March, when a majority thought that the war was going well, the country was evenly divided. But by September, the number who said that things were going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan had dropped to 44 percent, and opposition to the war had grown to 58 percent," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. Full news...
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December 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Medair: High in Afghanistan’s mountains, Yusif Habib, a father of five, lives in the remote village of Zermod-Payan. For generations, this tiny village's main source of drinking water has been a rushing mountain river. “Every day, I make seven trips to the river with two 20-litre jerry cans,” said Yusif. “And it is a long walk from the river, up the steep hill. It is very difficult in winter.” Full news...
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December 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Fourteen Afghan civilians were killed and four others injured Thursday when a minivan struck a bomb in a Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan. The device exploded on a road between the districts of Gereshk and Sangin in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold where US-led international troops are battling hard against the Islamist militants. Full news...
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December 29, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Wall Street Journal: U.S. officials in Afghanistan have spent thousands of hours over the past few years charting what they call “Malign Actor Networks”—webs of connections between members of President Hamid Karzai’s family, businessmen, corrupt officials, drug traffickers and Taliban commanders. Full news...
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December 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly released well-connected officials convicted of or charged with drug trafficking in Afghanistan, frustrating efforts to combat corruption and providing additional evidence that the United States’ top ally in the country is himself corrupt. Full news...
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December 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
New York Times: A girl was keeled over in pain, silent in her agony. She held herself tightly rocking, head down on her knees. “Sick, sick,” an old woman told us, showing us around the camp. In the neighboring tent, the girl’s newborn was sleeping. She was too sick to feed the baby. We were alarmed. It was the summer of 2009, and I was in Afghanistan with a fellow graduate student who wanted to build a school there. Full news...
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December 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Confidential UN maps show a clear deterioration in security in parts of Afghanistan this year, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, as its mission there acknowledged security in some parts had worsened. Two United Nations maps, one showing the situation at the start of this year’s fighting season in March and the other towards its end in October, highlight a particular decline in parts of the north and east, the paper said. Full news...
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December 27, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Fiscal Times: In its bid to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s teeming population, the United States has spent more than $55 billion to rebuild and bolster the war-ravaged country. That money was meant to cover everything from the construction of government buildings and economic development projects to the salaries of U.S. government employees working closely with Afghans. Full news...
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December 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: Growing insecurity and unemployment in Afghanistan is forcing Afghans into the capital, across borders and into the insurgency looking for work. Every day hundreds of men gather at Kote Sangi; one of the busiest intersections in Kabul. They fill the intersection waiting for work; they pass time talking and joking over cups of tea. Full news...
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December 24, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: NATO forces, acting on apparently faulty intelligence, killed two Afghan private security guards and wounded three others in a gun battle early Friday that could lead to renewed criticisms of foreign forces by President Hamid Karzai. Full news...
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December 23, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Associated Press: U.S.-donated medicines and pharmaceutical supplies meant to keep the new Afghan army and police healthy have been disappearing before reaching Afghan military hospitals and clinics, and the government said it is removing the army’s top medical officer from his post as part of an investigation into alleged corruption. Full news...
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December 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Rethink Afghanistan: It’s obscene how much money we’re spending on the Afghanistan War while millions of Americans are out of work. Case in point: We’re spending about $3,000,000.00 a pop on rocket launcher systems. Each HIMARS rocket launcher system costs $3,000,000.00. HIMARS systems were in the news earlier this year after U.S. forces killed more than a dozen civilians when a rocket landed in a compound in Marjah. Full news...
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December 22, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: You would think there would be more of an uproar in a country with the highest maternal death rates. No other country in the world loses more women in childbirth than Afghanistan. None. Rarely has being first at something meant so much loss. It's not just the women either, lest you callously chalk it up to the inevitable argument over women's oppression in a country like Afghanistan... Full news...
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December 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: The president’s review only confirmed what informed observers already know. U.S. troops can win nearly any firefight. But ultimately we are no more secure, and Afghanistan is no closer to becoming a stable and developing country. No matter how light or agile their “footprint,” U.S. and allied occupying forces end up generating as many enemies as they kill, not only in Afghanistan but in other Muslim lands. Full news...
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December 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Inter Press Service: The Barack Obama administration’s claim of “progress” in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October. But those tactical gains came at the price of further exacerbating the basic US strategic weakness in Afghanistan - antagonism toward the foreign presence shared throughout the Pashtun south. Full news...
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December 20, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said on Monday. Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach “well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars.” Full news...
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December 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: At two in the morning on Sept. 9, 2005, five DynCorp International security guards assigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's protective detail returned to their compound drunk, with a prostitute in tow. Less than a week later, three of these same guards got drunk again, this time in the VIP lounge of the Kabul airport while awaiting a flight to Thailand. Full news...
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December 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghan Abdul Wahab swings a heavy sledgehammer down onto a red hot piece of metal to mold it into a truck part, sweat dripping down a face marked with grime and soot from the fire, and with a focus rare for an 11-year-old. Wahab is one of about 1.2 million Afghan children in part or full time work, the government says... Full news...
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December 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: During the mid-1960s, America’s goal during a crucial stage in the Vietnam war was to defeat the enemy militarily. But it had no realistic political strategy to underpin the goal, and it was this which ultimately led to failure. America’s strategy in Afghanistan is now suffering from a similar weakness. Full news...
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December 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Time: Night-time raids by Special Forces have become a mainstay of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but they have turned much of the local population in the war zone against the Western presence. The conflicting narratives over what transpired in an Oct. 3 raid in the rugged farming hamlet of Loyi Rud, near the Pakistan border, is typical of the disconnect between the NATO mission and many of those it purports to protect. Full news...
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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Four Afghan soldiers were killed in an overnight NATO airstrike in a Taliban flashpoint of southern Afghanistan, the country’s defence ministry said Thursday. “Initial reports we have indicate that an air strike last night killed four Afghan National Army soldiers who were on a patrol mission in Musa Qala district,” defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP. Full news...
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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NBC News: A crackdown on private security firms in Afghanistan has created a power vacuum in the country’s capital city, with one security contractor saying Afghan forces have become like “kids in a candy store” as they harass and solicit bribes from expatriates and those who protect them. Full news...
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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: At 4am, Abdul Malek and his pregnant wife were in a rented car heading to Boost Hospital in Lashkargah, capital of southern Helmand Province. The couple decided to leave their home in the Sangeen District as early as possible to avoid roadblocks by pro-government forces or being seen by anti-government forces. Full news...
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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AOL News: Rampant illiteracy among Afghanistan's army and police recruits is fueling corruption and slowing training, according to a U.S. Army official working with the nascent security forces. “Estimates range, but we think right now when we're recruiting that only 15 percent of the soldiers and policemen that we recruit are literate,” Col. John Ferrari, the deputy commander for program at NATO Training Mission Afghanistan, told reporters in a conference call. Full news...
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December 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: A roadside bomb killed 14 civilians and injured four when it ripped through a minibus in western Afghanistan on Thursday, a government official said, the latest casualties of escalating violence in a once-peaceful area. The blast came days after a similar homemade bomb in the south of the country killed 15 people, and six Afghan soldiers died in separate NATO air strikes that were meant to target insurgents. Full news...
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December 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: A Pentagon report due out this week will probably try to convince us that the war in Afghanistan is on the right track. And yet a poll released this month surveying Afghan public opinion says otherwise. Although the poll results showed some bright spots, after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, security and day-to-day life in many regions of Afghanistan aren't improving. Full news...
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December 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn. Full news...
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December 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Eleven people including three policemen and eight demostrators were injured as they clashed in eastern Paktia province on Saturday, provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Safi said. “Eight demonstrators and three police sustained injuries as police opened fire to disperse the demonstrators but the demonstrators resisted and hurled stones on police in provincial capital Gardez city today,” Safi told Xinhua. Full news...
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December 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: General David Petraeus, in a rare public show of indecorum, last week suggested that corruption has been a part of Afghan culture since the country came into existence, which is a sentiment that is not only, from a historical and anthropological perspective, wholly ignorant, but one that exposes intentions on the General’s part that seem both dubious as well as misplaced. Full news...