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March 31, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Nation: Having a presidential election in Afghanistan is sort of like trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again—that is, if every piece of the eggshell were trying to kill all the other pieces. Thirteen years after the US invasion in 2001, Afghanistan is no closer to being a unified country than it was back then, after a decade of war during the Soviet period, the civil war that followed and finally the conquest by the Taliban. Full news...
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March 29, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Violence against journalists has been growing. The last two years have been tough on the media fraternity. Two more names were added in March to the list of reporters killed by Taleban violence: Nils Horner, a radio journalist reporting for Radio Sweden, and Sardar Ahmad, reporter for AFP. Both were gunned down in Kabul. Full news...
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March 29, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Health Minister Suraya Dalil believes health care is at the doorstep of 70 percent of Afghans and only an hour away from the rest. But a quick look reveals a vastly different story. Last month at a conference on public-private partnership in Kabul a very optimistic minister also said, “Statistics show Afghanistan has developed considerably in the health sector.” Full news...
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March 28, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Metro: Addicts in the world’s most drug-affected Afghan region are feeding their own children opium to keep them quiet, and selling relatives to fund their own heroin habits, Metro has learned. And such is the desperation to pay for drugs, any ruse will do. Abdurahim Mutar, 36, admits trading in his own sister, Tazagul. Full news...
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March 27, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
American Free Press: The tragic overdose death of Academy Award winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman on February 2, brought renewed interest to the subject of cheap heroin on America’s streets. Across the country, heroin use is on the rise, despite the billions of dollars spent by United States law enforcement fighting it. Full news...
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March 26, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Global Research: Afghanistan has been called “the worst place in the world to be a woman,”1 because not only is the poverty pervasive and the lifespan short, but while they are alive many women live like serfs. Afghan students at the private school for girls where I work in Kabul recently produced a series of essays in which they describe the social norms for women in their country. Full news...
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March 25, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: A group of Taliban insurgents, including two suicide bombers, stormed an office of the election commission in the Afghan capital Tuesday, killing six people, around the same time that two suicide bombers killed six members of the Afghan security forces in an eastern province. In a third attack, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vest during an athletic competition, killing five people. Full news...
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March 24, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Ministry of Work and Social Affairs on Monday said that economic problems had forced more than one million children into child labour across Afghanistan. Deputy Minister Wasil Mohmand, who visited a training workshop on creating awareness about labour laws, said that currently 1200,000 children lived on their own in Kabul and other provinces. Full news...
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March 21, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Afghan officials say an explosion during a ceremony marking the Persian New Year has killed three people in the southern province of Kandahar. Police spokesman Zia Durani says militants used a new style of weapon in Friday’s attack. He says they threw an explosives-packed bottle that blew up when it landed on the ground. Full news...
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March 20, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Taliban fighters have killed at least 10 policeman in an attack on a city in eastern Afghanistan. Gun battles started early on Thursday morning in Jalalabad after a “multi-pronged” attack by insurgents. Police said they shot dead seven attackers, all of them wearing suicide bomb vests. Full news...
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March 19, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Catholic Online: A new report on human rights in Afghanistan released by the U.S. State Department reveals that girls as young as six can be “married” away or betrothed and are the victims of frequent sexual abuse from older men, sometimes within their own families. Full news...
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March 19, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Antiwar.com: The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned of the problem of “ghost workers” in the past, but their most recent letter to the Combined Security Transition Command (CTSC) suggests the problem may be bigger and worse than ever suggested before. Full news...
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March 19, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Scoop Media: Farewell to the British, as they leave the country that took their soldiers, and more than a sense of dignity. Forces are being withdraw (the popular term is drawn down, as if they were blinds) and it is hard to see the mission in Afghanistan as anything but another intervention that did not quite pan out well for the invader. At one point, 137 bases dotted Helmand province. Full news...
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March 18, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people at a crowded market in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said, as security is ramped up ahead of presidential elections. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Maimanah city, the capital of Faryab, a remote province that borders Turkmenistan and has a mixed population of Uzbek, Turkmen and Pashtun ethnic groups. Full news...
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March 17, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Canalisation Department in eastern Nangarhar province says its own security apparatus is directly involved in illegal occupation of the department’s land. Canalisation Director Ziarat Gul Rahil told Pajhwok Afghan News his department’s own security officials had a key role in paving the ground for the department’s land to be grabbed. Full news...
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March 14, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
UPI: At least six civilians, including two women and two children, were killed in a roadside bomb explosion in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, officials said. Local government officials said Thursday’s blast occurred after a civilian vehicle struck the improvised explosive device, Khaama Press reported Friday. Full news...
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March 13, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The News International: The number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan plunged last year amid growing care to avoid civilian deaths, but the death toll in neighboring Afghanistan continues to rise, the United Nations´ special investigator on counterterrorism said Wednesday. Full news...
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March 12, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A joint Afghan-US security force raided a house in the Mohammad Agha district of central Logar province early on Wednesday morning, killing one inmate and arresting two others, officials said. The joint force conducted the raid in the Kandahari village around 4am in pursuit of suspected insurgents, the district chief, Abdul Hamid Hamid, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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March 11, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Unidentified gunmen beat a journalist until he was unconscious and also shot him in the capital of northern Balkh province, the victim and police said on Tuesday. With wound marks visible on his face, Mukhtar Wafaee, in-charge of Howaida website, told a press conference two men with pistols in hands stopped him on his way home from university in the third municipal district of Mazar-i-Sharif on Monday evening. Full news...
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March 10, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Millions of dollars have been poured into the health sector. Yet for many Afghans the nearest health centre is roughly three days away, and two-thirds of pharmacies do not have professional staff. An investigation by the Independent Media Consortium (IMC) Productions. Full news...
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March 9, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A roadside bomb ripped through a car in southern Afghanistan, the deadliest of a series of weekend attacks that killed 11 civilians, officials said Sunday. Seven people, including three women and two children, were killed and eight others wounded when the car was hit while traveling in the volatile Helmand province, according to a statement by the provincial governor’s office. Full news...
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March 7, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: President Hamid Karzai’s government has let down Afghan women, according to the new EU ambassador to Kabul, who singled out the failure to end prosecution of rape victims and other abused women for “moral crimes” as a particular “disgrace”. Full news...
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March 6, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
International Business Times: Five soldiers were killed and 17 people in total were injured in an air strike led by NATO in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Logar on Thursday. Among the wounded were eight members of the Afghan National Army and the soldiers’ deaths were confirmed by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, which called it an accident. Full news...
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March 5, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Slate Magazine (blog): A few years ago, award-winning journalist and poet Eliza Griswold learned the story of Zarmina, a young girl in Afghanistan who had regularly phoned a radio hotline for women who wanted to share poems called “landays.” Landays are couplets expressing laments, jokes, and frustrations; they are forbidden to many Afghan women because they imply dishonor and free will. Full news...
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March 3, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Driving between Dasht-e-Archi and Kunduz City is perilous. Armed gangs are robbing people with impunity on the busy highway between the district and the provincial capital. Twenty-five buses were stopped on the Abdan Dasht stretch, and passengers forced to give up jewelry, money and goods. Full news...
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March 2, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A woman was gunned down by her in-laws in Jawzjan, taking the number of women killed in the northern province this solar year to 32, police said on Sunday. Provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Faqir Mohammad Jawzjani told Pajhwok Afghan News the 21-year-old married woman had been shot to death with a hunting rifle in Shiberghan, the provincial capital. Full news...
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March 1, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC Persian TV: About half the personnel serving in Afghanistan’s security services are illiterate, despite huge investments in teaching programmes, according to a survey by a US watchdog. According to the Afghan Education Ministry, only about one-third of Afghans can read and write. Full news...