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June 9, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: For rent on Street 6 in the neighborhood of Sherpur: a four-story, 11-bedroom dwelling of pink granite and lime marble, complete with massage showers, a rooftop fountain and, in the basement, an Asian-themed nightclub. Price: $12,000 a month. It’s a relative bargain in this district favored by former warlords and bureaucrats — Kabul’s version of Beverly Hills. Full news...
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June 9, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: For months, reports have abounded here that the Afghan mercenaries who escort American and other NATO convoys through the badlands have been bribing Taliban insurgents to let them pass. After a pair of bloody confrontations with Afghan civilians, two of the biggest private security companies — Watan Risk Management and Compass Security — were banned... Full news...
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June 7, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The most powerful man in this arid stretch of southern Afghanistan is not the provincial governor, nor the police chief, nor even the commander of the Afghan Army. It is Matiullah Khan, the head of a private army that earns millions of dollars guarding NATO supply convoys and fights Taliban insurgents alongside American Special Forces. Full news...
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June 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: Lt Col Roly Walker, who lost five of his soldiers when they were shot dead by a rogue policeman in a compound in Helmand in November, said that the force was still one of the "biggest obstacles to progress." He said that the local force was "the reason for the insurgency" in the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand and that the corruption meant the local population was more distrustful of coalition troops and less likely to be loyal to the Afghan government. Full news...
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June 2, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
National Post: Eighteen years ago, as manager of a family-run Afghan restaurant on North Halsted Street in the Chicago’s Wrigleyville district, Ahmed Wali Karzai spent his days serving aushak and lamb dwopiaza ... Today, the chubby 49-year-old half-brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, is the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan. The “King of Kandahar” has built up a shadowy political and commercial empire that touches virtually every institution and individual of influence. Full news...
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May 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: The two Afghan girls had every reason to expect the law would be on their side when a policeman at a checkpoint stopped the bus they were in. Disguised in boys’ clothes, the girls, ages 13 and 14, had been fleeing for two days along rutted roads and over mountain passes to escape their illegal, forced marriages to much older men, and now they had made it to relatively liberal Herat Province. Full news...
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May 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Speaking to graduating cadets at West Point on Saturday, President Obama noted the "ultimate sacrifice" of 78 of their predecessors who gave up their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he did not mention that just days before, five U.S. soldiers were killed in Kabul, bringing the toll of American dead in Afghanistan to over 1,000. Full news...
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May 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: Afghan military investigators have accused Ahmed Wali Karzai, U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai’s controversial half-brother, of intervening to protect powerful allies who are squatting illegally on government property in southern Afghanistan... Investigators concluded that Ahmed Wali Karzai’s friends, allies and relatives were building offices, housing projects illegally on more than 1,000 acres of government land in and around Kandahar city. Full news...
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May 11, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Stars and Stripes: While many government jobs in Afghanistan are handed out as prizes, no one is fighting over the post of Kharwar district sub-governor. Given the dingy shipping container that serves as both the sub-governor’s home and the district center for this rugged, volatile area high in the Hindu Kush mountains in eastern Afghanistan’s Logar province, it’s no surprise that the last appointee fled his job. Full news...
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May 11, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC. Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base. Full news...
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May 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The US government is facing fresh questions on its oversight of war funding amid mounting evidence that a $2.16bn trucking contract is enriching Afghan warlords linked to the controversial half-brother of President Hamid Karzai. Investigators also suspect that some of the funds from the contract end up in the hands of the Taliban, either through bribes paid by sub-contractors or extortion rackets run by militia leaders colluding with insurgents. Full news...
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May 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: It is well known that the Taliban, local criminals and international drug cartels profit enormously from the drug trade; that corruption is rife; and that huge amounts of aid money are pouring into Afghanistan. Less clear is the effect of all this on government power and the rule of law on which humanitarian aid organizations depend to carry out their mandate. Full news...
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May 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
McClatchy Newspapers: Although the members of Afghanistan's elite new police force have been touted as the country's best and brightest, U.S. military strategists find that they're plagued by the same problems as Afghanistan's conventional police, who are widely considered corrupt, ineffective and inept. Full news...
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May 9, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Canwest News Service: A solid majority of Canadians believe prisoners detained by Canadian soldiers have been tortured after being transferred to Afghan authorities, a new Ipsos Reid poll suggests. A fat majority also say that if torture occurred, it was not only wrong but that they believe there was widespread knowledge of it within the Canadian government -- and that senior officials should lose their jobs, if that was the case. Full news...
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May 7, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Sydney Morning Herald: The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, current and former counter-terrorism officials say. The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by Barack Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern-of-life” analysis,... Full news...
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May 7, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Powerful men had forcefully captured thousands of acres of land in northern provinces, locals and officials said. The nomadic Kuchis and livestock owners also complained that the government had assigned them some chunks of green land where they could graze their herds, but the same was forcefully captured by some powerful people who do not allow them to take their herds there. Full news...
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May 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
LewRockwell.com: I was surprised on my recent trip to Afghanistan that I learned so much…about the United States. I was in Afghanistan for two weeks in March of this year, meeting with a large number of Afghans working in humanitarian endeavors – the principal of a girls’ school, the director of a school for street children, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, a group working on environmental issues. The one thing that all of these groups that we met with had in common was, they were penniless. Full news...
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May 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Globe and Mail: Terrifying threats of dying from multiple gang rape “by four big black guys” who would catch little Afghan boys in the shower of a U.S. prison, was used by interrogators at Bagram to scare detainees into confessing, Omar Khadr’s lead interrogator admitted today. “It was a factious story that we made up” because we knew “Afghans were terrified of rape,” the interrogator said. Full news...
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May 5, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Times Online: Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the American private security organisation, has claimed that his employees have called in airstrikes in Afghanistan. He also mocked Afghan military recruits for needing lessons in how to use a toilet, and questioned the value and quality of other countries’ troops in the country. Full news...
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May 3, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hajj and Auqaf ministry’s cashier has accused second vice president and seven ministers of embezzling one million of dollars during last year’s Haj ritual.... during his hearing, Noor said, “I have nothing to do with this as I am just a cashier. How can I be given bribe?” He said he was just following the orders for transferring the money. He requested the court to arrest Khalili and the seven ministers, who he did not name. Full news...
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May 2, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN (Translated by RAWA): Some MPs have reported that body parts of Afghans who are sentenced to death in Iran, are being removed. Today’s parliamentary session was mainly about the Afghans executed in Iran. The arguments turned very sour after Sadiqqui Zada Neeli, representative of Daikundi, spoke of supporting Iran. Neeli said that Iran carries out the sentences with the consent of those sentenced. Full news...
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May 1, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: Twice a week, a caravan of trucks lumbers out of this volatile northwest Pakistan city in the dead of night and makes its way toward Afghanistan, loaded with one of the most coveted substances in a Taliban bombmaker’s arsenal: ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Every time the illicit caravan makes its trip, it moves unhindered past a gantlet of Pakistani police checkposts along the Pak-Afghan Highway. Full news...
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April 30, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: What to do with Afghanistan? Despite President Obama's 30,000 strong troop surge and millions of dollars being poured in, the Afghan bus has not managed to extricate itself from the ditch it has been stuck in. The Pentagon's report to Congress yesterday underlines what most people already know: the population "sympathizes with or supports the Afghan government" in only 24% of the key parts of Afghanistan. Full news...
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April 29, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
WSWS.org: The Times reported that “more than a dozen military and civilian officials directly involved in the Kandahar offensive” had agreed to speak about the special forces’ activities because it would help “scare off insurgents” before the bulk of American troops move into Taliban-held areas of the city. This claim is either patent nonsense or deliberate deception. The Taliban do not require an article in the American media to inform them that “large numbers” of their fighters are being killed or captured. Full news...
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April 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Morning Star: Britain has long known that Afghanistan is accused of using torture but is still handing over prisoners, new evidence in a legal action against the British government claims. Peace campaigner Maya Evans is bringing a judicial review against the Defence Secretary over allegations that British troops were complicit in the torture of Afghan prisoners by handing them over to the notorious Afghan Security Service (NDS). Full news...
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April 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Asia Times: On his first day in office, President Barack Obama promised that he would close the George W Bush-era prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "as soon as practicable" and "no later than one year from the date of this order". The announcement was met with relief, even joy, by those, like me, who had opposed the very existence of Guantanamo on the grounds that it represented a legal black hole where the distinction between guilt and innocence had been obliterated, respect for the rule of law was mocked, and the rights of prisoners were dismissed out of hand. We should have known better. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Veterans Today Network: As usual, America is in a war for all the wrong reasons, pushed by Israel, bought off by drug money and backed into a corner. At a time when a “new broom” and strong leadership is needed, we respond with “damage control.” Even with the press descending into simple “drum beating” for an Israeli attack in Iran to get at the gas supplies needed for her secret pipeline deals, her “shill” in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is simply no longer credible. Full news...
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April 19, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FOX News: In recent weeks, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s anti-western behavior has become well known to even the most casual observers of Afghanistan. First, he stood next to, and appeared to agree with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian President called America and its international allies fighting in Afghanistan “occupiers.” Days later, Karzai told supporters in a closed door meeting he might consider joining the Taliban if his western partners didn’t stop pushing him to clean up government corruption and interfering in Afghan affairs. Full news...
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April 16, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Express Tribune: The US is improvising its policy in Afghanistan based on this review and on Obama’s subsequent policy interventions, including the commitment to increase the force level in Afghanistan by another 60,000 troops during 2010. Despite these changes no major improvement has occurred in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban have become more aggressive and are stronger than before. Full news...
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April 5, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Up to 200 people have been sentenced to death in Afghanistan over the past 15 months but President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign any execution orders, according to the Supreme Court. “We have sent many execution verdicts to the president but he has not signed any for over a year,” Abdul Rasheed Rashid, a member of the Supreme Court’s High Council, told IRIN. Full news...
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