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March 30, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
ProPublica: After routing the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. government began a now 13-year effort to stabilize and develop the country. It has cost taxpayers billions — and some say, achieved little. These stories examine the waste and problems plaguing U.S. reconstruction efforts that, despite the end of combat, will continue to cost billions — even as our military presence shrinks. Full news...
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February 11, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Workers of a textile factory on Wednesday protested against powerful individuals for grabbing houses the government has constructed for them in the capital of northern Baghlan province. Based on a decision by the parliament, the newly-constructed houses in Shar-i-Naw, Yaksad Penjakoti, Dosadkoti, Shashsadkoti areas of Pul-i-Khumri and those constructed on the left side of the Pul-i-Khumri river belong to workers of the textile factory. Full news...
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February 8, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Hopes pinned on Aynak in Logar, Hajigak in Bamyan and the Amo river as potential sources of huge tax revenue for Afghanistan are fading. Ambitious plans to mine copper and iron ore in Aynak and Hajigak respectively are still on paper; oil drilling from the Amo river has started but it’s nowhere close to the 300,000 barrels projected when the contract was awarded in 2012. Full news...
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January 26, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Officials and residents of central Bamyan province allege an influential man, Haji Ayan, has grabbed hundreds of acres of state-owned land along with other local strongmen. Eng. Khadim Hussain Fitrat, the mayor of Bamyan City, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Monday that Ayan and his associates had started selling plots of the land. Full news...
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January 17, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Khaama Press: Agriculture, Irrigation & Livestock minister-designate Mohammad Yaqub Haidari is on the most wanted list of the International Police (Interpol) for tax evasion. According to the information provided on Interpol website Haidari is wanted by the judicial authorities of Estonia for prosecution. Full news...
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January 15, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An overwhelming majority of the ministers-designate and heads of independent departments lack requisite professional expertise, Pajhwok Afghan News has found. Only 15 percent of the nominees have mandatory educational qualifications and 63 percent are inexperienced, according to documents made available to this news agency. Full news...
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January 12, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera America: Shortly after the U.S.-led military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the international community, together with the transitional Afghan government, set about standing up security forces to counter retreating Taliban forces and remaining Al-Qaeda fighters. Along with the Afghan National Army, in 2002 it established the Afghan National Police (ANP), which consisted of uniformed police, border police, anti-crime officers and civil order police. Full news...
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January 6, 2015 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: At the beginning of December Najib’s 10-week-old daughter fell ill, crying with stomach ache late into the night. The next day her chest seemed to hurt, so Najib took her to the doctor, who prescribed paracetamol for the pain, phenobarbital for sedation and the antibiotic cefixime to kill potential bacteria. But over the next few days the baby’s health deteriorated. “She was healthy. We did not expect that this disease would affect her like that,” Najib, 30, said. Full news...
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December 31, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Time: Early this year, officials in Washington extolled a rare success in the fight against the drug trade in Afghanistan: The authorities there had imprisoned a leading opium trafficker on the United States’ kingpin list, Haji Lal Jan Ishaqzai. The incarceration hinted at a newfound willingness by the Afghan authorities to prosecute criminals whose clout once made them untouchable. Full news...
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December 27, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: People in power have usurped more than 100,000 jeribs of public land in the west of the country. The government has obligingly looked the other way in half the cases, according to an investigation by Killid. Among the estimated 1,138 usurpers – 650 in Herat province alone – are two former governors, a former mayor and the mayor of Farah district who have taken over public land for private use with the support of cabinet ministers in the previous government. Full news...
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December 18, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Bloomberg Businessweek: “Do you want to listen to Taliban cassette?” Matiullah Matie asks as he steers his white Toyota Corolla along a narrow road surrounded by cornfields and mud huts. He keeps the tapes in the car for long drives, Matie explains, just in case he picks up a hitchhiker who looks like a Talib. “They think I am such a pious mujahid man,” the round, bearded businessman laughs. “They don’t know I am screwing them all.” Full news...
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November 30, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killd Group: Far from providing shelter for the poor, a housing project bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development has been appropriated by the government. A Killid investigation. Documents in Killid’s possession, including a letter dated Feb 2, 2014, show 64 percent of the apartments in the 179-million USD Qasabah housing project – also called Amarat Township to honour the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – has been shared among office and domestic staff of the president and two vice-presidents. Full news...
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November 27, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Participants in recent IWPR-organised debates in Afghanistan identified corruption as the most enduring legacy of ex-president Hamed Karzai and the post-Taleban era. Residents of Badghis, Baghlan and Kapisa provinces accused the government of being unable to fight massive corruption in these three provinces because it was itself mired in graft. Full news...
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November 19, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: An Afghan independent corruption watchdog says the usurpation of state and private land has been "a significant problem" for Afghanistan over the past decade. The Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee issued a report on November 19, saying nearly a quarter of a million hectares of land have been usurped during the last 10 years. Full news...
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November 15, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Government fails to pay Breshna bills The new government has promised to solve the country’s chronic power shortage. But state electricity supplier Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat says it is owed millions of Afghanis by government offices. Public entities and offices owe the company 9 million Afs (155,600 USD) of its nearly 12 million Afs (207,500 USD) outstanding receipts. Full news...
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November 12, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Some call them “the men who sit on golden chairs” — Afghan customs officials who preside over a vast ecosystem of bribery that stretches from dusty border crossings to the capital. They have become fabulously wealthy by depriving their aid-dependent treasury of at least 500 million USD a year, according to the most conservative foreign estimates. Full news...
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November 7, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RT: How does the military lose half a billion dollars worth of equipment in one year? That’s the question Pentagon auditors are asking after it was revealed that US military equipment worth 420 million USD went missing in action in Afghanistan last year. According to a recent Pentagon report, 156,000 pieces of hardware, including sophisticated weapons systems, vehicles and communications gear vanished into thin air in fiscal year 2013. Full news...
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November 5, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Acting ministers in corruption net The High Office of Oversight and Anti-corruption (HOOAC) has sent 355 dossiers to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) that includes 21 dossiers of high ranking officials including acting ministers in the new government. Rashid Tota Khel, the head of secretariat in HOOAC, says 1,604 complaints were received since 2008 and all were registered. Full news...
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October 15, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Cicero Magazine: The correspondence between the chief of the US watchdog on Afghanistan reconstruction and the administrator of the UN’s development agency over a trust fund bankrolling the Afghan police force is an entertaining read. In a series of letters, John Sopko, special inspector general, alleged that the UN agency mismanaged the trust fund, known as LOTFA, allowing the Afghan interior ministry to milk 200 million USD in “deductions.” Full news...
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September 8, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Dozens of families in central Daikundi province are resisting the construction of a town in the provincial capital, alleging land had been allotted for the project with the connivance of the governor. The protesting families accused Governor Abdul Haq Shafiq of complicity in grabbing 100 acres of land for the town -- a charge that Shafiq vehemently rejected. Full news...
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August 28, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: A new law designed to regulate Afghanistan’s nascent mining sector could increase corruption, lead to forced displacements and even allow armed groups to take control of the sector, transparency groups have warned. The law, passed by parliament earlier this month, is likely to lead to the signing of several key deals to extract the country’s newfound minerals - estimated to be worth as much as USD 3 trillion. Full news...
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August 9, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Afghan voters put their faith in democracy and voted twice in two months for a president. But there is growing unease about the commitment of their leaders to a peaceful transition of power. For six months everything has been on hold including the economy. People say the long-running presidential election has become like a TV serial they are getting tired of watching. Full news...
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July 31, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The cost of rebuilding Afghanistan has exceeded the amount of money spent putting Europe back on its feet after the Second World War, it has been disclosed. A US government report revealed the unprecedented levels of corruption and waste that have pushed the cost of reconstruction beyond the total spent under the Marshall Plan. British and other western troops are preparing to leave the country at the end of the year. Full news...
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July 30, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Times: The U.S. could be funding the very terrorists in Afghanistan it is fighting because of an Army oversight process that’s so bad it’s not weeding out businesses connected to insurgents, a top watchdog warned Wednesday. In one instance, a contractor identified as being connected to insurgents was even given access to a U.S. and allied facility — and got paid for its work — because it hadn’t been prevented from receiving jobs. Full news...
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July 28, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
World Policy Institute: Many of the 747,000 weapons the U.S. Department of Defense has given to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have not been properly labeled or accounted for, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The widespread mislabeling, duplicate labeling, and rudimentary tracking of weapons means that insurgents could easily get a hold of guns or other weapons. Full news...
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July 23, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Residents claim tens of thousands of afghanis, which are released by the education department in the name of teacher salaries, end up in pockets of a few individuals in the Maroof district of southern Kandahar province. Education department officials say there are a total of 40 schools in Maroof and eight of them have been closed due to insecurity, but residents reject the claim and say not a single school is operational in the town. Full news...
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July 19, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: A Killid investigation reveals there is a mindboggling 30 to 80 percent corruption in customs in the western provinces. Millions of dollars are being embezzled, and jobs in customs offices are sold for between 10,000 and 100,000 USD. Full news...
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July 18, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Washington Examiner: Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it can certainly burn like them. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent 1.57 billion USD on nearly 2,000 buildings for the Afghan National Army — but as many as 1,600 are at risk of catching on fire, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Full news...
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July 17, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The governor of central Logar province has allegedly sold 20,000 litres of fuel, which was stolen from an Afghan National Army (ANA)’s battalion and recovered by police, a government official said on Thursday. The fuel had been stolen by ANA’s 7th battalion commander in Mohammad Agha district, Mohammad Hakim Tolo, on Saturday night. Full news...
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July 10, 2014 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
WSWS.org: The announcement on Monday that preliminary results show that Ashraf Ghani won the June 14 presidential election in Afghanistan has provoked immediate conflict with the power base of rival candidate Abdullah Abdullah. Abdullah has denounced the election as rigged, the purported result as “a coup against the will of people,” and declared himself the victor. Full news...
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