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October 31, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Afghanistan has been placed among the world’s saddest nations in the latest “Prosperity Index” issued by a global organisation on Thursday. The latest five-year index -- released by the London-based Legatum Institute -- placed Afghanistan 139 in its rankings, reflecting the overall wealth, health and happiness of countries. Full news...
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October 30, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) on Wednesday expressed its deep concern over the increasing culture of male prostitution in society, asking the government to check the menace. The AIHRC said the immoral practice was widespread and increasingly becoming a tradition involving powerful men. The individuals complicit in the sordid business were apparently getting away with the crime, she added. Full news...
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October 29, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Middle East Monitor: According to information reported by Cryptome, the NSA monitored 7.8 billion calls in Saudi Arabia, the same figure as Iraq; the Saudi government has not commented on the issue yet. Afghanistan and Pakistan have the lion’s share of monitored calls, with 21.98 and 12.76 billion respectively. In Europe, the US monitored a staggering 361 million calls in Germany, followed by France with 70.2 million and Spain with 61 million. Full news...
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October 27, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: A roadside bomb blast hit a bus in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing 18 civilians, most of them women. Afghan officials said the blast occurred in the Andar district of Ghazni province as the bus was going from one village to another just before dusk. Fourteen women, three men and a child were reported killed. Five other women were were wounded, and a police official said two were in critical condition. Full news...
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October 25, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RT: The cost of keeping each American soldier in Afghanistan is set to nearly double to 2.1 million, at the same time that crucial sectors of the US military are underfunded, according to a new analysis of the Pentagon’s budget. US military planners are scrambling to explain why the cost has ballooned to 2.1 million USD, after holding steady at 1.3 million USD annually for the past five years. Full news...
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October 24, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Hundreds of men, some on crutches, all wearing tattered clothing, gather shortly before dawn at major intersections throughout Kabul and other Afghan cities. Displaying primitive tools such as a level or a trowel, they seek labor that is often backbreaking, always temporary and will earn just a few dollars for a day’s work. Full news...
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October 24, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NPR: It’s one of the most touted "positive statistics" about Afghanistan: Today, there are 10 million Afghans enrolled in school, 40 percent of them female. Under the Taliban, about 1 million boys and almost no girls were attending schools. Western officials routinely point to the revived education system as a sign of success and hope for the future. Full news...
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October 24, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Intelligence operatives in eastern Laghman province have detained 21 children, some as young as 7, being taken to Pakistan for receiving suicide attack training, an official said on Thursday. The children, aged between 7 and 12 years, were detained a day earlier after they entered Laghman from Nuristan province, the provincial National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Nasrullah Nasrat told a press conference. Full news...
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October 23, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Mail Online: A young couple in conservative southern Afghanistan have been found beheaded, apparently killed for having a love affair outside of marriage, officials said Wednesday. Police investigating the case said they believed the family of the woman, aged around 20, was responsible for the murders in the southern province of Helmand, a lawless hotbed of the Taliban insurgency. Full news...
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October 22, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Foreign Policy: On April 22, 2013, complying with the verdict of his village’s mullahs, a father publicly executed his daughter in Afghanistan’s northwestern province of Badghis. The young mother’s alleged crime: running away with a male cousin while her husband was in Iran. This case, among many others, shows that the Afghan state has failed to protect women from violence. Full news...
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October 21, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: U.S. inspectors are on the trail of a successful Afghan businessman they believe has channelled millions of dollars in aid to the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, one of the deadliest insurgent groups in Afghanistan, but still has donor-funded reconstruction contracts around the country. Full news...
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October 19, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: In a hidden shelter on the edge of the Afghan capital, a dozen girls and women crouched on thin cushions one recent afternoon, their faces drawn with fatigue and fear. Some had been found wandering the streets; others had traveled long distances in flight from abusive families, forced marriages or unhappy lives. Full news...
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October 18, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Sayed Gul walked into a small mud brick room in eastern Afghanistan, a bundle wrapped in a shawl on his back. With a flick, he plonked the package onto a threadbare carpet and hundreds of voter cards spilled out. “How many do you want to buy?” he asked with a grin. Full news...
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October 17, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: NATO-led military coalition, failing to keep track of hundreds of millions of dollars in vehicles parts purchased for the Afghan National Army or ANA, could not account for 230 million USD in this regard in 2012, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has said. Full news...
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October 16, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The World Food Programme on Wednesday said 60 percent children were reportedly faced with malnutrition in Afghanistan alone, with over 842 million individuals lacking adequate food around the world. “While security issues related to insurgency and foreign aggression monopolize most discourse in Afghanistan, a lesser noted form of insecurity – food and nutrition shortage – also threatens the country's prosperity,” a WFP statement said. Full news...
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October 14, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Who would ever wish to be pregnant in a place with that kind of danger? But Afghan women living in the remote northern province of Badakhshan have had no other choice. In 2009 we travelled to the villages with the worst ever recorded rate of women dying in childbirth. Full news...
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October 13, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Two civilians were killed and five others injured as foreign troops opened fire in response to an insurgent attack in eastern Kunar province, where Taliban executed two young boys on spying charges, an official said on Sunday. Militants fired mortar shells at a base of foreign troops in Asadabad, the provincial capital, sparking a retaliatory fire from the troops, the governor said. Full news...
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October 13, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: The public mourning for 4,785 people killed during the first 20 weeks of communist rule has brought back memories of tens of thousands of others who were abducted and disappeared or killed. Few people survived the brutal interrogations and incarceration. This testimony* is of Sayed Akbar Jafari who witnessed the Chendawol uprising. Full news...
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October 11, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: In an interview with TOLOnews on the International Day of the Girl Child, Assistant General Secretary of the United Nations (UN) John Hendra expressed major concerns with recent trends of violence against women, which he said were threatening the gains made since the fall of the Taliban in improving the lives of female Afghans. Full news...
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October 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghanistan risks becoming a “full-fledged narco-state” without international support to help create alternative jobs for its people, a senior United Nations official said on Wednesday. Yury Fedotov, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), painted a bleak picture of Afghanistan’s narcotics problem before next year’s withdrawal of NATO-led combat forces. Full news...
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October 8, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Tufts Daily: Malalai Joya, Afghan activist and former member of the Afghan National Assembly, gave a presentation entitled “Prospects for Afghan Women and Non-Intervention in My Country” in Barnum Hall yesterday. “I want to share with you the consequences of this vile, disgusting war,” Joya said. “It is changing our country into one of Mafia states and war crimes. Life is now tougher for millions of Afghans.” Full news...
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October 7, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission office in the southeastern zone on Monday said incidents of violence against women had increased in Paktia, Paktika and Khost. The office head, Prof. Noor Ahmad Shamim, told Pajhwok Afghan News so far 99 cases of violence against the gender had been registered over the past six months, compared to 73 cases in the corresponding period last year, showing 25 percent surge. Full news...
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October 6, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The deadline for registering as a candidate in Afghanistan’s coming presidential election was Sunday, and the election commission had a request for contenders: When you come to declare your candidacy, do not bring your gunmen. Afghan and Western officials have for months described the election, scheduled for April 5, as a chance for Afghans to decide the path their country will take as the forces of the American-led coalition depart. Full news...
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October 5, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RT: Five civilians, three of whom were children, were killed in an overnight airstrike in eastern Afghanistan, local police said on Saturday. NATO has said it does not know anything about the victims. The civilians had been going out to hunt birds with air rifles in the Nangarhar province when they were shot down by NATO forces. Full news...
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October 4, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FoxNews.com: A well-known former Afghan warlord who welcomed Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda fighters to his training camps in the 1990s and was a mentor to the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks is one of the candidates running to be the country’s next president in elections next April. Full news...
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October 3, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TomDispatch.com: The Afghan War is officially winding down. American casualties, generally from towns and suburbs you’ve never heard of unless you were born there, are still coming in. Though far fewer American troops are in the field with Afghan forces, devastating “insider attacks” in which a soldier or policeman turns his gun on his American allies, trainers, or mentors still periodically occur. Civilian casualties continue to rise. Full news...
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October 2, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Stars and Stripes: Civilian casualties in Afghanistan increased 16 percent in the first eight months of 2013 compared with last year, the United Nations reported on Wednesday. Some regions of the country have seen “stark” increases in violence against civilians, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Human Rights Director Georgette Gagnon, told journalists in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. Full news...
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October 1, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Afghans have begun two days of mourning for victims of the communist government in the late 1970s. It was prompted by a list naming 5,000 people who were killed or disappeared in that time. Many were conservative opponents of the government which seized power in April 1978 - a year before the Soviet invasion. The BBC’s David Loyn reports from Kabul. Full news...