Galesburg.com: Chayes, who organized a co-op of Afghan men and women making skin care products from herbs and botanicals as an alternative to the opium poppy trade, wrote, “I hear from Westerners that corruption is intrinsic to Afghan culture, that we should not hold Afghans up to our standards. I hear that Afghanistan is a tribal place, that it has never been, and can’t be, governed. But that’s not what I hear from Afghans.” What they see instead, she said, is a restoration to power under President Hamid Karzai of the gunslinging, crooked warlords who were repudiated when the Taliban first started taking over vast parts of the country a few years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. The “appalling behavior” of officials in the current government, including rampant bribery, extortion and violence, is a serious factor in the Taliban resurgence.      Full news...

AFP: Fourteen children were among 20 Afghans killed in new extremist attacks in insurgency-hit Afghanistan that also left two Canadian soldiers dead, security officials said Sunday. The children and two adults died in a powerful suicide car bombing in the eastern province of Khost, said the NATO-led force, which has troops across the country to fight the insurgents. "In the process he killed 16 Afghans and wounded 58 others," NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Recent statistics show that about 25% of women in the country are subjected to sexual violence. Younis Payan, deputy of the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA), who was giving a speech on the first day of a one-day workshop (A Happy Family and Intact Society from Islam’s Viewpoint), said the survey had been conducted recently. According to Younis Payan, the statistics show that about 30.7% women suffer physical violence and another 30% suffer from psychological violence.      Full news...

Quqnoos: Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has expressed concerns over the increasing poverty in the country. According to the latest report by the commission, about ten million people in Afghanistan which make 37% of the population, suffer from severe poverty. Also a large number of people in Afghanistan earn less than Afg.50 in a day.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The trade in children is spurred by the battered country's economy and the failure of foreign aid to reach beyond the coffers of central government in the capital Kabul. A cameraman working for Channel 4 News, Mehran Bozorgnia, witnessed the sale of an eight-year-old boy, Qassem, to Sadiqa, a wealthy woman from Kabul, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The police in Farah province arrested five men-including a policeman -for kidnapping and raping a 15-year old girl and rescued the girl from them. According to him, the soldier of the Provincial Security Commander had kidnapped a 15-year old girl from the Farah city and took her to the home of one of his relatives, and there together with some other men raped her.      Full news...

Miami Herald: Kabul's growing crime problem is more than a security issue -- it's a sign of a failing government. If government security forces -- whom many charge with complicity in the crime wave -- can't protect the populace from thugs, how can they protect remote parts of the country from an increasingly armed, financed and organized Taliban, residents say. More U.S. troops around the capital may not be the answer.      Full news...

PAN: Three of a family, including a couple and their son were killed by the firing of Coalition forces in Kandao area near NATO base in Khost City of the eastern Khost province. Tahir Khan Sabri, deputy governor of the province told Pajhwok Afghan News that coalition forces in an operation at the house of the brother of Dr. Bilal has killed his brother, sister-in-law and nephew.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Nurallah strode into our workshop in Khandahar shaking with rage. His mood shattered ours. "This is no government," he stormed. "The police are like animals." In the seven years I've lived in this stronghold of the Afghan south - the erstwhile capital of the Taliban and the focus of their renewed assault on the country - most of my conversations with locals about what's going wrong have centered on corruption and abuse of power. "More than roads, more than schools or wells or electricity, we need good governance," said Nurallah during yet another discussion a couple of weeks ago.      Full news...

CounterPunch.org: After early speculation that the recent Mumbai attacks were linked to Pakistan, a former U.S. Defense Department official now asserts that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) had a hand in training the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists. Earlier this year Afghan president Hamid Karzai blamed Pakistan for a brazen assassination attempt from which he barely escaped, and U.S. officials contend that the July 7, 2008 bombing of India’s Kabul Embassy, which claimed 41 lives, had also been aided by the ISI.      Full news...

National Post: Foreign aid organizations say food shortages and early snows may leave eight million Afghans -- 30% of the population -- on the brink of starvation this winter. Famine could easily overtake violence as the country's top problem. "The current situation is extremely fragile," said Susannah Nicol, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program(WFP) in Kabul.      Full news...

The First Post: Qadir, a short plump man constantly on the phone making social arrangements, did not join the Taliban for ideological reasons. He was in Kabul on an infrequent shopping trip, ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid. With deep black hair, beard and eyes, Qadir is Pashtun - the ethnic group from which the Taliban draws most of its support - and he sprawled low in the back of the taxi until we were able to stop and find a private room with draped windows where he propped himself up on a pile of cushions and smoked ferociously while we talked. "To begin with I thought the international forces would bring peace and stability," Qadir said. "Then they started treating Afghans as their enemies. Their Apache helicopters killed civilians working in the fields."      Full news...

The Associated Press: A day after an Iraqi reporter hurled a pair of shoes at President George W. Bush, the American leader on Monday again held a news conference before a group of reporters from a country that the U.S. invaded under his watch. Karzai's deputy spokesman, Saimak Herwai, told Afghan reporters that they had to address Bush as "His Excellency," an honorary title not typically used with U.S. presidents.      Full news...

San Francisco Chronicle: Today, many Afghan couples are torn between adhering to the tradition of large families and the financial reality of caring for many children. Afghanistan has the highest fertility rate in Asia at more than seven children per woman. About 800,000 people annually are added to the nation's population of 32 million, according to the United Nations Development Fund. The dilemma is particularly significant in rural areas where parents depend on children to tend crops and livestock, but where war and drought have pushed many Afghans into poverty.      Full news...

CNN: A man identified as an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at -- but missed -- President Bush during a news conference Sunday evening in Baghdad, where Bush was making a farewell visit. Bush ducked, and the shoes, flung one at a time, sailed past his head during the news conference with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in his palace in the heavily fortified Green Zone.      Full news...

AP: United States soldiers opened fire on a bus carrying civilians Friday in central Afghanistan, killing four passengers after the driver refused to stop, military officials said. At least 10 passengers were wounded, said Halim Fidai, the governor of Wardak Province. The military said the wounded had been evacuated to military hospitals. The shooting occurred about 40 miles south of Kabul, the capital, on the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar.      Full news...

IWPR: The Mirwais Meena girls’school used to be a bustling place with over 1300 students. But now the halls and grounds are nearly empty, the swings hang motionless on the recreation field. On a late November morning, there were only a dozen or so girls and three female teachers to be seen. The rest, traumatised by a vicious attack on November 12 that left several girls disfigured and two blinded, have chosen to stay at home.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime. When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers. Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.      Full news...

RAWA News: According to a report of Radio Azadi, on December 8th, a horrifying crime shooked the little village of Khomdan, some distance from Dasht-e-Qala District of Takhar province. Two women and a 2-year old girl were cut into pieces with an axe, by unknown armed men. It’s still not known who is behind this crime.      Full news...

Capitol Hill Blue: On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury initiated an extended series of articles about the CIA connection to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Though the CIA and influential media like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times went out of their way to belittle the significance of the articles, the basic ingredients of the story were not really new -- the CIA's Contra army, fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua, turning to smuggling cocaine into the U.S., under CIA protection, to raise money for their military and personal use.      Full news...

RIA Novosti: U.S. forces killed six Afghan police officers on Wednesday in a friendly-fire incident in the city of Qalat in southern Afghanistan, a local deputy police chief said. The U.S. military said in a statement that a civilian was also killed in the firefight, and 13 people were injured. The police station building was severely damaged.      Full news...

Time: Like many mothers in Afghanistan, Maghferat Samimi has affixed the photo of a child to her mobile phone. But the two-and-a-half-year-old is not her daughter.... Last year Samimi received a phone call from General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally who was appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as Army Chief of Staff, threatening to have her raped "by 100 men" if she continued investigating a rape case in which he was implicated. Dostum denies ever making such a threat and calls the rape allegation "propaganda." A witness to the phone call, military prosecutor General Habibullah Qasemi, was dismissed from his post soon after, despite carrying a sheaf of glowing recommendation letters penned by U.S. military supervisors.      Full news...

Reuters: The Taliban hold a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan, a think-tank said on Monday, but NATO and the Afghan government rejected the report, saying its figures were not credible. The findings by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) come in the wake of a series of critical reports on Western-led military and development efforts to put an end to the seven-year Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.      Full news...

Vancouver Free Press: The 101 Canadians who have been killed in Afghanistan believed that they were serving our country, and for that they deserve our respect and gratitude. We must not forget or trivialize their ultimate sacrifice. But there is an awful truth that we tend to avoid, a truth that must be proclaimed if we are to end the killing on all sides of that bloody conflict. The truth is that those 101 brave Canadians died for nothing. Their lives were taken away from them, and from their loving families and friends, for a lie. More accurately, they died for a series of lies.      Full news...

PAN: Locals in Helmand province claim that ten civilians including women and children were killed in the air strike of coalition forces in the Nad-e-Ali district. Haji Abdul Haq Helmandwal, a local elder said that a house in Shin village was targeted in the attack where six children and two women were killed. He said that six others were injured who were ferried by ISAF plane for treatment in their facility.      Full news...

PAN: Local people on Thursday informed a tribal elder along with seven family members has been eliminated during an air and ground operation by the US-led coalition troops in the southeastern Paktia province.Haji Muhammadullah, a resident of Sahak area in the lawless Zurmat district told Pajhwok Afghan News that the area people were busy pulling out dead bodies of Sardar's family members from debris as killed in the bombing Wednesday midnight. "Haji Sardar neither had links with Taliban fighters nor with al-Qaeda network" he remarked.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): This year, the rate of violence against women in Kunduz, especially rape of small girls has increased by two times compared to last year. Expressing concern over this situation, Nadira Gyah, head of the Women’s Affairs in Kunduz told PAN that this year 60 cases of violence, including that of rapes, beatings, coerced marriages and running away from homes due to lack of substantial sustenance; were recorded in the administration.      Full news...

IRIN: The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called on all warring parties in Afghanistan to consider children as "zones of peace" to help protect them against the ravages of war. UNICEF says children are among the most vulnerable groups in the conflict; they do not have the capacity to influence the decisions of warring parties and should not be affected by the conflict.      Full news...

IRIN: Drought, poverty and lack of food have adversely affected the life of many children in Chemtal and elsewhere, forcing some to work instead of going to school. Eight-year-old Ahmad Shafi and his younger brother spend many hours a day fetching drinking water for their family in the drought-stricken Chemtal District of Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan. They have been unable to attend school as a result. "We start around eight in the morning and finish by midday," Ahmad told IRIN, adding that their job was "difficult" and "long".      Full news...

The Guardian Weekly: Human rights are in crisis in Afghanistan, where fundamentalist warlords hold high office and child abuse and gang rapes are on the increase. When Malalai Joya, a young female Afghan politician, spoke out against the presence of 'war criminals' in the affairs of state, she was expelled from parliament among shouts of ‘whore’ and ‘communist’. The recipient of various international prizes for bravery, she speaks of her commitment to defend the rights of women and children despite numerous attempts on her life.      Full news...