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December 1, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system. Full news...
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December 1, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: More than a hundred people on Thursday rallied in Kabul against the execution of death-row Afghans in Iranian jails, asking the neighbouring country to immediately release the bodies to the victims' relatives. Most of the protestors, hailing from 15 provinces, were relatives of the victims. Carrying pictures of their dead kin, the demonstrators urged the government to step up efforts at transferring the corpses of their relatives from Iran. Full news...
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December 1, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Press TV: The afghan capital Kabul has been once again the scene of a massive demonstration against the strategic partnership issue between Afghanistan and the US. Recently, a Loya Jirga or Grand Council Meeting in Kabul gave the go-ahead to President Karzai to ink the strategic agreement with the U.S and it has greatly angered the local people. Full news...
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December 1, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: The elected assembly for the western Afghan province of Herat is under fire from police and prosecutors, who accuse its members of corrupt practices including getting crime suspects released. Allegations of interference in the affairs of local government and policing reflect tensions between the 19-member elected council and the executive, local observers say. Full news...
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November 30, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Sherzai was 13 years old when his uncle sold him to Taliban insurgents for 15,000 Pakistani rupees (170 dollars). “Then the Taliban told me to carry out a suicide attack,” he said, now in a juvenile correctional facility in Kabul. “They said I would be a martyr and I would go to paradise.” Full news...
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November 30, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: A gang in north Afghanistan reportedly indignant at a father’s refusal to give his daughter up for marriage have sprayed the family of five with acid. Allegedly led by the suitor, they broke into the house in Kunduz, beat the father up, then sprayed him, his wife and three daughters in the face. The father and eldest daughter are in critical condition, doctors say. Full news...
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November 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Independent Online: The international community has been pumping huge sums of money into Afghanistan for more than a decade, but the country remains one of the world’s 10 poorest. The World Bank estimates that 15.7 billion dollars in aid flowed into the country last year alone. The economy has been growing at more than 9 per cent on average for several years, but from an extremely low base. Full news...
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November 29, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN (Translated by RAWA): As a result of the firing of mortars by ISAF forces, three women were killed in one home and two others injured in another. Haji Mohammad Sarwar Khan, one of the tribal elders of the Zheray district, told PAN on 29th November that the incident took place two days back in the Nalghaam village of the district. Full news...
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November 27, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Kabul Municipality officials on Tuesday said that 70 percent of high-rise buildings in the capital were illegally constructed, blaming the relevant authorities for failing to take action in this regard. The Onyx Construction Company’s building in Kalola Pushta and others in Nawabad, Mirwais Maidan Road and Sara-i-Shomali were built without permission from the government, an official said. Full news...
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November 26, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Unidentified gunmen gang-raped a kidnapped schoolteacher in Pul-i-Khumri, the capital of northern Baghlan province, officials said on Saturday. The woman teacher was abducted by armed men from the eighth road of Baghlan-i-Markazi district late on Thursday, Col. Mohammad Kamin, the district police chief, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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November 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NPR: In Afghanistan, a media boom followed the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, but it hasn’t been without problems. Watchdog groups report hundreds of cases of violence and intimidation against journalists, including murder. Afghan reporters have learned which topics are off limits, and they take great care to avoid offending the country’s most powerful personalities. Full news...
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November 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: At a bustling Kabul market, people smugglers are making a quick buck out of Afghans increasingly desperate to buy a new life in Europe before NATO combat forces leave in 2014. Ordinary people pay up to $13,000 for the chance to embark on a long and perilous journey -- hiding in truck chassis, stowing away on boats or trekking across mountains -- that they hope will take them to a better life. Full news...
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November 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC: Seven civilians, including six children, have been killed in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, local officials say. District Governor Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi told the BBC the civilians died late on Wednesday in the Zheray district of Kandahar province. He said the strike had been launched in a remote area after Taliban insurgents were seen planting roadside bombs. Full news...
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November 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: Afghan prosecutors announced Wednesday that a young rape victim, jailed for adultery after reporting the crime and pushed into marrying her attacker, would have her sentence reduced from twelve to three years. The prosecutor said she would, for now, remain in jail -- with her child -- for not reporting her attack fast enough. 21-year-old Gulnaz was attacked by a relative two years ago, but sentenced to 12 years in jail for adultery. Full news...
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November 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: In an effort to counter a growing insurgency in northern Afghanistan, two U.S.-backed programs in Kunduz have recruited local militias to oppose Taliban militants in the area. But while the militias are better at fighting the Taliban on the battlefield, their methods turn local populations against them. Full news...
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November 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: Thousands of children roam the dusty streets and grimy alleyways of Afghanistan, working to earn desperately needed money for their families. The sight of shabbily-dressed children, sometimes as young as three years old, is a common one around the military bases and shopping areas where they ply their trades under the blazing sun of summer or the biting cold of winter. Full news...
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November 22, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The gifts referred to in the title of “Blood and Gifts,” a superb new play by J. T. Rogers about the long history behind the American involvement in Afghanistan, are on ominous view throughout the play. Big boxes are carried onstage and cracked open to reveal piles of artillery. Shiny new rifles are waved in the air like harmless toys. Suitcases full of dollars are handed over with a cool smile. Full news...
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November 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Khaama Press: Officials in the Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan on Sunday expressed concerns regarding increasing violence agains the women during the past six months. According to an official in the Human Right Commission of Afghanistan, Suraya Sobhrang, around 2433 violence against the women cases have been registered across the country during the past six months which shows an increase as compared to the previous year. Full news...
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November 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: More than 1,000 university students blocked a main highway in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday as they protested against any agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan after a planned transfer of authority in 2014. An assembly of more than 2,000 tribal elders and dignitaries known as a loya jirga endorsed the idea of such agreement in a conference that ended Saturday... Full news...
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November 19, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Salon: It’s not exactly breaking news that Afghanistan is rife with corruption. But a new Congressional Research Service report obtained by Salon underscores just how bad things have gotten — and just how much taxpayer money is being lost to fraud. Full news...
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November 18, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pakistan Observer: AS part of the Great War in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has convened a farcical show of hand-picked cronies in Kabul, called Loya Jirga, to endorse plans for long-term strategic relationship between the United States and Afghanistan that, among other things, would legitimize establishment of six US permanent military bases in the strategically located country. Full news...
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November 18, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Eight Afghans, including seven children, were killed in two separate blasts Friday, officials said, the latest civilian deaths to hit the troubled country. In the first incident, four children died when a roadside bomb went off as they played near their home in Nangarhar province, near the country’s eastern border with Pakistan. Full news...
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November 18, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: More than 2.5 million people face hunger in drought-stricken areas of Afghanistan despite billions of dollars of aid that have poured into the country in recent years, aid agencies say. Many villagers have only limited supplies of food left as winter looms, as the BBC’s Mike Thomson reports from the central province of Bamiyan. Full news...
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November 16, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: With his broad cheekbones, hair swept back under a sequined cap, and the gentle manner of a well-to-do Pashtun, Atal Afghanzai might easily pass for a doctor or an engineer. Instead, his career path led into a cloak-and-dagger world of covert armies and foreign agents, until a rare lethal run-in with an Afghan police chief landed him on death row in Kabul’s most notorious prison. Full news...
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November 15, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera: A US-funded survey in Afghanistan says that 73 per cent of the population is satisfied with the government’s performance, a claim which leaders and analysts have disputed as being far from reality. The survey, published by Asia Foundation, a US-based non-profit with more than a dozen offices across Asia, also said that nearly half of Afghans think their country is moving in the right direction. Full news...
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November 15, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Daily Star: “The Taliban come to any house they please, by force. Then they fire from that house, and then [the International Security and Assistance Force] and the Afghan National Army fire at the house. But if I tell the Taliban not to enter, the Taliban will kill me. So what is the answer? Either ISAF kills me or the Taliban kills me. The people cannot live like this.” Full news...
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November 14, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: In a parliamentary scandal of a peculiarly Afghan variety, former members are failing to hand back the firearms they were issued with. As well as around 400 Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, computers have gone missing from former members’ offices, parliamentary staff say. Although the loss of weapons and other items may seem minor in a country awash with guns and plagued with corruption... Full news...
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November 13, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CBS News: The former prisoner of the American military in his native Afghanistan entered the office leaning on a crutch. He said he had trouble walking after spending a year confined to a 35-square-foot jail cell at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, about an hour’s drive north of the capital, Kabul. He agreed to speak with us only if we kept his identity hidden. We agreed to call him just “Mohammed.” Full news...
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November 13, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A sharp increase has been registered in fuel prices over the 10 days in western Herat province, which borders a major gas exporting country, Turkmenistan. The price of a kilogram of liquefied gas has increased by 25 afghanis during the period, residents of Herat city, the provincial capital, say Full news...
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November 12, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Times: Assadullah Sher Mohammad, who is serving 12 years in Kabul’s notorious Pul-e Charkhi jail for raping and making pregnant a 19-year-old relative, said the EU “had done a good thing”. Yet his endorsement, first delivered when The Times visited him in jail two months ago and reiterated by his brother yesterday, has highlighted the EU’s growing isolation. Full news...