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January 31, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Among the throngs of inmates in downtown Kabul’s prison trying to prove they are not thieves or insurgents is a soft-spoken Sikh man with piercing black eyes. He is being held on a highly unusual charge: falsely claiming Afghan citizenship. Baljit Singh, 23, says he was born in Afghanistan but that his family fled religious persecution when he was 5. Full news...
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January 30, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The young Afghan woman gave birth to a third girl three months ago — to a husband, the authorities say, who had been demanding a boy. Last week, the man and his mother, in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, put a rope around the woman’s neck and strangled her, the police said. Full news...
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January 29, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Forty newborn babies have died in southeastern Khost province over the past one month, indicating a sharp increase in the infant mortality rate, health officials said on Sunday. The 40 newborns who died had less than a kilo of weight, Public Health Director Dr. Hidayatullah Hamidi told Pajhwok Afghan News during an exclusive interview. Full news...
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January 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CounterPunch: Drug addicts are pathetic but sometimes happy people. They are pitiable in their hopeless enslavement to something that dominates and will probably kill them, but seem content in a warped sort of way because they can be taken out of their bleak and dismal lives into who knows what warm and cozy cocoons of whirligig private ecstasy by use of narcotics that will ravage their minds and bodies. Full news...
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January 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An Afghan driver was shot dead by Pakistani police in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday when he failed to pay 20 rupees (less than 10afs) in bribe, a transport union official said. A policeman killed Tawab Gul, an Afghan refugee, in the Pishtakhara locality of Peshawar, said Ayaz Khan, a member of the city transport union. The victim lived in Nothia area, he added. Full news...
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January 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Much of Dawood Boy’s village in northern Afghanistan is empty. More than 1,000 families from Alburz in Balkh Province abandoned it 4-6 months ago after a drought affecting nearly half the country left 2.8 million people in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Programme. The drought destroyed the crops Boy had planted, killed his livestock which no longer had animal feed, and left his family without seeds for next season. Full news...
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January 25, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Fox News: Afghanistan has suffered from foreign meddling since its inception. But while Pakistan’s role has been widely discussed -- most Afghans will point to concrete examples -- Iran’s involvement is more subtle. Iranian influence is all encompassing--the Islamic government funds Afghan Shiite sects and politicians, has invested in building roads and providing fuel and transport... Full news...
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January 24, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Mohammad Qasim, a 58-year-old butcher, is traumatised, depressed and anxious -- like 50 percent of his fellow Afghans after 30 years of war, according to government figures. Qasim saw his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandsons aged five and six die in a horrific suicide bombing in Kabul last month. Full news...
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January 24, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Human Rights Watch: The dire human rights situation in Afghanistan showed few signs of progress in the past year, raising serious concerns about the future, Human Right Watch said today in its World Report 2012. While progress was made in Afghanistan in several areas, the general population and women in particular suffered from the widespread lawlessness and abuses by the security forces and armed groups, Human Rights Watch said. Full news...
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January 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: With snow piled deep in front of his small Kabul shop and a border shutdown enforced by Pakistan driving up food prices and severing a vital lifeline into Afghanistan, Asmatullah is having his own winter of discontent. Since Pakistan closed supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the coalition killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border air attack in November, ordinary Afghans and foreigners alike are feeling the impact of soaring food costs. Full news...
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January 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Illegal gunmen have prevented contractors from clearing roads of snow in western Ghor province, an official said on Monday. The gunmen sought money from contractors in return for letting them continue snow-clearing operations, the Afghanistan Natural Disasters Management Authority head for Ghor said. Full news...
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January 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Seventy percent of children in a district of eastern Nangarhar province have caught various diseases due to exposure to harsh weather conditions, officials and residents said on Monday. Up to 100 centimetres of snow had been recorded so far in the Hesarak district, where roads connecting the town with Jalalabad remained closed, said the district development council head. Full news...
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January 22, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Womensenews: In the summer of 2003, I met a girl in an Afghan town straddling the desert who would become an obsession for me. I knew her for only a few weeks, but those few weeks shaped the next four years of my life in Afghanistan. What I remember most about her is her scared look, a gaze that deepened her otherwise blank green eyes. Full news...
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January 21, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RAWA News: A couple of heavy snowfalls in Kabul guaranteeing that a drought won’t hit Kabul this year, made life all the more harder on its poor people. Already battered by war waged by the foreign forces and Taliban, poverty and cold mercilessly put people on a test for survival. The prices of fuels rose like every year but the prices of food items skyrocketed this year as Pakistan has closed the most used trade route. Full news...
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January 20, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Hundreds of people took to the streets in a town in northeastern Afghanistan Thursday in protest over a night raid by Afghan and NATO forces that allegedly killed six civilians, an official said. A woman and a child were among the dead in the air and ground raid on Dewa Gul Vally, a Taliban stronghold in the Chawki district of Kunar province, on Monday night, provincial governor Fazlullah Wahidi told AFP. Full news...
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January 19, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: The attack erupted in one of the best-protected parts of Afghanistan: the military-controlled portion of the Kabul airport. As two dozen people gathered for a routine morning meeting in a conference room, an overweight and aging Afghan helicopter pilot pulled a pistol out of his flight suit and began shooting U.S. Air Force officers in the backs of their heads. Full news...
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January 19, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: As Afghanistan marked the eighth anniversary of its constitution this month, legal experts bemoaned the failure to put it into practice, blaming conflict, corruption and a culture of impunity. The constitution passed on January 4, 2004 laid out a vision of a modern Afghanistan committed to human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Full news...
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January 19, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Avalanches have killed at least 29 people in Afghanistan’s mountainous northeast as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas cut off by heavy snows, officials said. The Afghan National Disaster Management Agency said Thursday that at least 40 more people have been injured in a series of avalanches since Monday in Badakhshan province. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Adelaide Now: Taxpayers will be hit with another 1 billion-plus USD bill to fund the war in Afghanistan next year as the Government struggles to conjure up a surplus in its May Budget. The cost of war hit 1.6 billion USD for last financial year or more than 1 million USD each for the 1550 Diggers on the ground. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: For citizens going into battle against Afghanistan’s officialdom, the warren-like building across the road from the headquarters of Kabul’s police chief is a one-stop shop for every document they could need. From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job application letters. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: British military police have arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused children in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Wednesday, prompting a furious reaction from Kabul. The Sun newspaper reported that a sergeant and a private from the Mercian Battle Group have been arrested over claims that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents. Full news...
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January 17, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Nation: Opium trade is a major component of Afghan economy that contributes to funding insurgency and escalating corruption in the country, while Afghan opium trade may have exceeded 2.4 billion USD, equivalent to 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the UN and an Afghan body said on Monday. Full news...
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January 17, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: It has often been called the polio cease-fire. In a country where insurgents have for years attacked and killed people working for the government or the international community, a small army of vaccination teams connected to both has, year after year, fanned out through some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas, quietly and mostly safely. Full news...
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January 15, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Incidents of violence against women increased in central Uruzgan province this year, when 60 cases were registered in the provincial capital alone, the Department of Women’s Affairs said on Sunday. Most of the incidents took place in far-flung areas, where some cases went unreported due to insecurity and other problems, Women’s Affairs Director Rana Sami Wafa told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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January 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest. Full news...
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January 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: Pentagon officials said Thursday they believed a video showing four Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans was authentic, and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta promised to investigate the incident, calling it “utterly deplorable.” As outrage over the explicit video spread, the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said the behavior was confined to “a small group of U.S. individuals”... Full news...
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January 12, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Production of opium and the illicit crop’s value soared in Afghanistan last year, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday. According to the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, farmer income derived from Afghanistan’s opium crop in 2011 was 1.4 billion USD (1.09 billion euros), representing nine percent of GDP. Full news...
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January 11, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: All Rahmatollah wants is the paperwork allowing him to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan so he can take a sick relative for treatment. For the last fortnight, though, he has been standing outside the census office in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, waiting to be served. “The officials aren’t here. Even if they are, they only work two hours a day,” Rahmatollah, a resident of Charchino district, told IWPR. Full news...
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January 9, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: In the gray light of each cold dawn, the parents of 10-month-old Shoaib hold their own breath as they listen for the rasp of his, waiting to see whether their coughing, feverish little boy has survived another night. Winter's chill has settled over the Afghan capital, and with it, privation is sharpening, especially among the city’s poor. Full news...
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January 9, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Only one in three Afghans has access to electricity despite years of spending to improve supply, and the country is still far too dependent on imported power, the head of the country’s state owned power utility told Reuters. Abdul Razique Samadi, the chief executive officer at Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), said the situation in the capital, Kabul, is far better ... Full news...