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December 1, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC Uzbek Service: In many areas of Afghanistan it is the warlords who hold sway - not the central government or the Taliban. They are able to exploit villagers with impunity using the threat, or the reality, of violence. In rural Takhar province, in the remote north-east of Afghanistan, time seems to have stopped in the 19th Century - bumpy roads, mud-built houses, lawless villages and no sign of the Kabul government. Full news...
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November 30, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
UN News: A senior United Nations official today called on the international community to step up its humanitarian support for Afghanistan to sustain the progress made so far in the country where thousands have suffered through 34 years of conflict and poverty. “It is clear that the Government is making progress; the candid and professional approach being taken is certainly impressive, but given the scale of the challenge, international funding support will also be key to success,” said... Full news...
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November 29, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The girl, Geesa, was attacked earlier this week by two men from the spurned family as she went to collect water from a stream in her village in northern Afghanistan. The attack came after her father, Mohammad Rahim, had turned down a marriage offer for the girl, saying she was too young to be engaged. Full news...
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November 29, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Just before she leapt from her roof into the streets of Kabul, Farima thought of the wedding that would never happen and the man she would never marry. Her fiance would be pleased to see her die, she later recalled thinking. It would offer relief to them both. Farima, 17, had resisted her engagement to Zabiullah since it was ordained by her grandfather when she was 9. Full news...
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November 28, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Persistent political interference has hampered efforts to unravel the colossal fraud at Kabul Bank, with President Hamid Karzai and a small panel of his top aides actually dictating to prosecutors who should be charged and who should not, according to Afghan and Western officials and the results of a public inquiry into the scandal. Full news...
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November 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: Sheila, a 15-year-old Afghan girl, has spent years attending a refugee-camp school on the north side of Kabul. But she still does not know how to write her own name. “I am supposed to study the Koran, Dari, mathematics, Pashto, the English language -- altogether I am enrolled in 11 subjects,” she says. “But there are no lessons at my school because the teachers come for just a few minutes. Then they leave. So we sit there doing nothing.” Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ANI: The Afghan government should not grant Taliban representatives amnesty from prosecution for serious crimes as part of talks with the insurgent group, Human Rights Watch has said. “Future government talks with the Taliban should not hinge upon denying justice to victims of war crimes and other abuses. Afghanistan’s civilians should not be forced to choose between justice and peace,” The News quoted Brad Adams, HRW Asia director, as saying. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
By RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal: At least 19 people have been injured in a bomb attack in the eastern Afghan city of Khost. Local officials say the bomb was planted on a bicycle and detonated early on November 26 in a market. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three warlords accused of grabbing and selling state-owned land by using fake documents in the Paghman district of Kabul have fled the country to evade arrests, an official said on Monday. More than 50 acres of land, allocated for the Qargha Park, was occupied before being sold, Deputy Attorney General Noor Habib Jalal told a news conference in Kabul. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Killid Group: On Oct 12, three people were arrested in the murder of a woman, Mah Gul, at her home in Shalbafan Village, Injil district, Herat. The woman’s head had been cut off. The police arrested her husband, mother- and father-in-law and a person who assisted in the crime. The dead woman’s brother,who took her body to the office of the Women’s Affairs Department in Herat City, says she was killed by her husband and his family. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Killid Group: Polecharkhi prisoners suffer from sexually transmitted diseases and drug abuse. Killid interviewed prisoners and a doctor in the Kabul prison to find that opium addiction and diseases like HIV-Aids are rampant among the 7,000 inmates. While 70 prisoners have been diagnosed with syphilis, 150 of the 700 prisoners on drugs were injecting the drug, according to Dr Hemat who leads a medical group in Polecharkhi. Full news...
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November 25, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Scotland on Sunday: Waheeda cannot now explain how she reached the final, terrible decision to set herself alight. She does remember the months of beatings and her brothers-in-laws’ abuse. But the moments before she poured oil over her legs outside the room where her in-laws were and ignited her clothes with a match are now clouded by 40 days of pain. Full news...
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November 25, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Afghanistan has closed down three major public universities in the capital Kabul for more than a week after sectarian clashes left one student dead and nearly 30 others wounded, an official said Sunday. The clashes erupted on Saturday after a ritual marking the Shiite Muslim festival of Ashura was interrupted by Sunni students. Full news...
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November 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A suicide attacker detonated a car laden with explosives Friday in eastern Afghanistan, killing two civilians and wounding about 60 others, officials said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying in a statement that the attack was in response to the recent execution of four Taliban detainees at the Afghan government’s main detention center in Kabul. Full news...
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November 22, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Killid Group: “I don’t know what happiness is,” says Qalam Gul who lost both legs and one hand in the civil war. From the remote area of Rod Khana in Nangarhar, Gul remembers the exact moment shrapnel changed his life forever. “It was 8 O’clock in the morning. I was having breakfast along with my sisters and brothers. There was bombing day and night. A rocket slammed into our house... Full news...
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November 21, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: It is ironic that when the world marked the Universal Children’s Day Tuesday to celebrate the joy of childhood, hundreds of Afghan children were seen scavenging in Kabul’s dumps trying to eke out a living by selling whatever usable items to support their families. “I will be happy if I find some plastic packets, cardboard box or Pepsi cans to sell and earn some money,” the nine-year-old Jawad told Xinhua in a brief interview. Full news...
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November 20, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: The amount of Afghan farmland planted with opium poppies has increased by nearly 20% this year, after high prices in 2011 tempted more farmers into growing the drug. Blight and bad weather meant the harvest of opium in the world's biggest producer of “black gold” fell by a third, according to the United Nations annual opium survey. But in the longer run that shortage could help keep prices near record highs, fueling further expansion of poppy farming. Full news...
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November 19, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Khaama Press: According to reports Iran has executed at least 13 Afghan nationals around two months ago. A number of the close relatives of the victims who gathered near provincial government compound urged the government officials to transfer the dead bodies of the victims from Iran to Afghanistan. Full news...
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November 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: The bank robbers were men who were often seen around town in uniform – police uniforms. They were, in fact, police. Three Afghan National Police officers fled a bank in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province after breaking in after hours and stealing more than 29 million Afghanis (about USD 550,000) late Friday night, according to Gen. Ghulamullah Nuristani, the provincial police chief. Full news...
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November 17, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: On a low bed in a quiet, all-female hospital ward, a depressed Afghan teenager huddles silently under blankets, her mother close by. In a nearby room are men suffering from schizophrenia, delusions of persecution and power, anxiety and panic disorders. Among them are some of the unseen victims of the war in Afghanistan: a generation of people mentally damaged by their exposure to incessant conflict. Full news...
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November 16, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Members of the minority Sikh community rallied against residents of the Qalacha neighbourhood of Kabul for opposing the cremation of their relatives’ bodies. Dozens of protestors in Pashtunistan Ward also accused the Afghan police and army of preventing them from burning their dead in line with their religious tradition. Full news...
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November 16, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: A roadside bomb has ripped through a vehicle in western Afghanistan, killing 17 civilians who were part of a wedding celebration. Afghan officials say Friday’s blast occurred on a road in relatively peaceful Farah province. Most of the victims were women and children. At least 10 people were wounded in the attack. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan is fast becoming a major source of opium, and local informal powerbrokers are making millions of dollars from the trade. The authorities appear powerless to act against major figures in the trade, who have occupied large swathes of land that in theory belongs to the state and are reaping huge rewards from the poppy trade, backed by small private armies. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The National: Passengers flying out of Kabul carried with them more than USD 4.5 billion (Dh16.52bn) in cash last year, leading to new rules restricting the amount of foreign currency that travellers can take out of the country to 20,000 USD at a time. “I am very concerned about cash leaving Kabul Airport in dollars,” said the central bank governor Noorullah Delawari. Full news...
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November 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Nearly 200 people staged a rally in the Baghlan-i-Markazi district of northern Baghlan province on Tuesday against local officials of involvement in abductions, land grab and torture. The protestors gathered in Jar Khoshk area, burning tyres and blocking the busy Baghlan-Kunduz highway for three hours. They called for the immediate sacking of senior district officials. Full news...
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November 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Senior Afghan officials are said to have discovered large-scale theft of fuel in Helmand and halted all deliveries to police in the province, compromising the ability of the force to operate in one of the Taliban’s major strongholds. The cost of stolen or “misallocated” fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at 600m USD (380m GBP)... Full news...
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November 12, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center: Over a decade after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the military campaign in Afghanistan, there is some good news, but still much bad news pertaining to women in Afghanistan. The patterns of politics, military operations, religious fanaticism, patriarchal structures and practices, and insurgent violence continue to threaten girls and women in the most insidious ways. Full news...
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November 11, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three children were injured during an airstrike by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Watapur district of eastern Kunar province, an official said on Sunday. The air raid targeting a rebel hideout was conducted in Qaro area, the governor’s spokesman, Wasifullah Wasifi, told Pajhwok Afghan News. But he had no information about militants’ casualties. Full news...
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November 11, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: A roadside bomb killed a family of six, including a baby born just hours before, in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, local officials said. The family was leaving a maternity hospital in Khost province in a pick-up truck when the bomb exploded, said a statement from the office of the provincial governor. Full news...
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November 9, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: The Jihadi Council led by Afghanistan’s Energy and Water Minister Mohammad Ismail Khan has started distributing weapons to its members in western Herat province, the provincial spokesman Mahiuddin Noori said Wednesday. Noori warned that armed groups apart from the Afghan security forces are against the law and the distribution of weapons is a criminal offence. Full news...