SocialistWorker.org: AS MORE revelations about the brutality and barbarism of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan emerge, the Obama administration and the Pentagon are countering the truth with more lies--and a shameful public relations offensive aimed at passing off endless war as “liberation.” Meanwhile, the voices of ordinary Afghans--and the toll of the U.S. war on their lives--are being ignored by politicians and the media alike.      Full news...

The Christian Science Monitor: Afghanistan elections planned for September aren't supposed to include parliamentary candidates with ties to militias. Problem is, many of those disqualified aren't actually involved with militias. 'The net caught a few small fish while the sharks swam around it,' says one election official.      Full news...

IWPR: Residents of the northern Afghan province of Sar-e Pol are campaigning against the nomination of men they accuse of being former warlords as parliamentary candidates. They have called on Afghanistan’s election body to exclude Haji Mohammad Rahim and Gul Mohammad Pahlavan, both former militia commanders, from the list of candidates for the September ballot.      Full news...

The Guardian: Iran is engaged in an extensive covert campaign to arm, finance, train and equip Taliban insurgents, Afghan warlords allied to al-Qaida and suicide bombers fighting to eject British and western forces from Afghanistan, according to classified US military intelligence reports contained in the war logs. The secret "threat reports", mostly comprising raw data provided by Afghan spies and paid informants, cannot be corroborated individually.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Amnesty International is calling on NATO to provide a clear, unified system of accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan, as leaked war logs paint a picture of an incoherent process of dealing with civilian casualties. Around 92,000 leaked US military files on the war in Afghanistan covering the period 2004-2009 were released Sunday by the website Wikileaks.      Full news...

The Guardian: Tensions between the US, Afghanistan and Paistan were further strained today after the leak of thousands of military documents about the Afghan war. As members of the US Congress raised questions about Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban, officials in Islamabad and Kabul also traded angry accusations on the same issue. The details emerge from more than 90,000 secret US military files, covering six years of the war, which caused a worldwide uproar when they were leaked yesterday.      Full news...

IRIN: Three years after President Hamid Karzai appointed a commission to investigate a mass grave site in the Chimtala plains, north of Kabul city, the site, the commission and the truth are missing. Dozens of mass graves have been disturbed or destroyed over the past eight years, and with them crucial evidence about atrocities committed and their perpetrators, human rights groups say. “In some cases, people have deliberately tampered with or destroyed a mass grave in order to hide criminal evidence,” Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) official Ahmad Nader Nadery told IRIN.      Full news...

The Wall Street Journal: Cooperation among Iran, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups is more extensive than previously known to the public, according to details buried in the tens of thousands of military intelligence documents released by an independent group Sunday. U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran's alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The man, described as a “notorious criminal” is said to have secured his position through the influence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard over local warlords in southern Afghanistan. He then set about dividing control of the local opium trade with a neighbouring police chief and extracting a cut of profits from farmers for himself, it is alleged.      Full news...

The Guardian: The depths of crime and drug-dealing in Afghan society are highlighted in lurid terms by the US intelligence reports. One log claims to describe how a "notorious criminal" was recruited to spy for Iran. It says he returned to Afghanistan and then became a police chief, gaining power and wealth by drug-dealing. This byzantine story comes from Bala Beluk, a district in the country's south-western province of Farah.      Full news...

Fox News: We’re shown in the last three weeks the police have shut down three different operations all doing business in our area. In one of them the police say a man recruited minors as prostitutes, used Craigslist to advertise for clients and did it all while never leaving New York City. In a second and separate case police say Arash Abbas ran an organization using adult girls he would book into high end hotel rooms across the county.      Full news...

ISN Security Watch: A recent survey by Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) shows a sharp expansion in corruption in Afghan society. Most Afghans now see the payment of bribes as a routine part of obtaining government services. In the three years since IWA came out with its previous corruption survey, the amount paid in bribes more than doubled, the watchdog group found. Afghans paid an estimated $1 billion in bribes in 2009, whereas IWA pegged the figure in its 2006 survey at $466 million.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of the eastern province of Nangarhar are worried about deteriorating security, blaming corrupt officials and "irresponsible" foreign forces for the surge in violence. Over the past one-and-a-half months, there have been at least 28 incidents of violence in Nangarhar, including three rocket attacks on the provincial capital, 11 roadside bombs targeting NATO vehicles and at least three suicide attacks, according to a Pajhwok tally.      Full news...

AP: The inspector general investigating fraud, waste and abuse in the USD51 billion Afghanistan reconstruction program has received a failing grade from his peers. The council of government auditors who reviewed the work asked Attorney General Eric Holder to consider suspending or rescinding law enforcement powers of the Afghanistan reconstruction watchdog.      Full news...

Tribune Media Services Inc.: As Gen. David Petraeus assumed his new command in Afghanistan earlier this month, he took up a strategy that has already failed - though not for the reasons most people assume. Certainly, as most everyone knows, the battle plan appears hopeless. Every night in Marjah, Taliban killers post "night letters" in mosques and other public places, warning city residents they will be killed if they cooperate with the Americans.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Corruption has soared in recent years as the United States and other international donors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghanistan, giving the Taliban a powerful tool to delegitimize the Afghan government, according to a new national survey. The survey, which was scheduled to be released Thursday by the Kabul-based anti-corruption group Integrity Watch Afghanistan, suggests that Afghans see their country’s police and judicial officials as the most corrupt in the government      Full news...

ABC News: Brigadier General Mohammed Asif Jabarkhel sits with folded arms in his office, just a few steps away from the security checkpoint at Kabul International Airport. "Of course I know what's going on here," the 59-year-old head of the airport's customs police grumbles from beneath his thick moustache as a fan whirs in the background. "But, in this country, who's allowed to speak the truth?"      Full news...

The Indian Express: More than USD 4.2 billion in cash has moved from Kabul airport during the past three-and-a-half years, far exceeding the earlier estimate and raising fresh concerns about corruption in the war-torn country. “Our records show that USD 4.2 billion has been transferred in cash through Kabul International Airport alone during the last three-and-a-half years,” Omar Zakhilwal, the Afghan Finance Minister wrote in a letter to Nita Lowey, a US Congresswoman.      Full news...

CNN: Violence isn't the only major problem in Afghanistan. Corruption is also hampering the war effort. Last week, US lawmakers voted to cut billions of dollars in aid to the Afghan government because of corruption. But Afghan officials say Western contractors are also to blame. In Kabul, a film-maker has his own unique take on the issue. Atia Abawi has that.      Full news...

The Canadian Press: Master Cpl. Jody Mitic was a sniper on patrol with his unit in Kandahar province in January 2007 when he stepped on a land mine and lost both legs below the knee. In the split second it took for the charge to explode, Mitic's life changed instantly, irrevocably. Mitic is one of the more than 500 Canadian soldiers who have been wounded in action in Afghanistan; even more suffer from "invisible wounds" that range from mild depression to debilitating post-traumatic stress syndrome, experts say.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: After nine years of war the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan lacks support at home and is widely recognized as a drain on the domestic economy in a time of severe economic contraction. The billions of dollars in U.S. economic assistance to the Hamid Karzai government has created an unsustainable class of Afghans who are dependent upon the American largesse and military presence that would be impossible to sustain by local taxes.      Full news...

BBC News: Meet Sorarya and you meet “attitude”. It has something to do with the way she wears her red tunic and trousers, her short cropped black leather jacket, and the way she chews gum and rolls her eyes. “What are you here for?” I ask as we sit in a makeshift beauty parlour, surrounded by a group of Afghan women in less flamboyant attire. “Should I tell her?” she asks the other women with a mischievous grin.      Full news...

ANP/AFP: Afghanistan’s top prosecutor Tuesday accused US ambassador Karl Eikenberry of threatening to have him removed from his job if he did not take action against an Afghan banker allegedly involved in fraud. "Against all diplomatic ethics, the US ambassador tells me: “If you don't jail him, you must resign,” Alko told reporters, citing a recent conversation with Eikenberry.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Top officials in President Hamid Karzai’s government have repeatedly derailed corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans, according to U.S. officials who have provided Afghanistan’s authorities with wiretapping technology and other assistance in efforts to crack down on endemic graft. In recent months, the U.S. officials said, Afghan prosecutors and investigators have been ordered to cross names off case files, prevent senior officials from being placed under arrest and disregard evidence against executives of a major financial firm suspected of helping the nation’s elite move millions of dollars overseas.      Full news...

The Guardian: The Obama administration has awarded $220m (£146m) in new contracts to the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater to provide security in Afghanistan. This is despite accusations against the company of murder and indiscriminate killings of civilians in Iraq and investigations into alleged corruption and sanctions busting. The contracts have drawn stinging criticism in Congress and assertions that because of Blackwater's reputation for indifference to innocent lives it will jeopardise the mission in Afghanistan.      Full news...

The New York Times: American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday.      Full news...

The New York Times: Mining companies around the world are eager to exploit Afghanistan’s newly discovered mineral wealth, but executives of Western firms caution that war, corruption and lack of roads and other infrastructure are likely to delay exploration for years. “Afghanistan could be one of the leading producers of copper, gold, lithium and iron ore in the world,” said Ian Hannam, a London-based banker and mining expert with JP Morgan.      Full news...

Raw Story: The whistleblower website that posted video of a US Army helicopter firing on unarmed civilians and killing two Reuters employees is ready to do it again, its founder says. (A screenshot of the clip appears at right; video available at this link.) Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange says he has obtained video of a US “massacre” that took place in Afghanistan in 2009.      Full news...

The New York Times: There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight. The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The sons of a female member of the Provincial council of Helmand, who raped a child last year, are still free from the hold of the law despite repeated demands and the orders of the authorities. Not everyone has the ability to watch the extremely shocking video clip of this rape, which has reached Kabul as well.      Full news...