News from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
RAWA News
News from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
RAWA News


 

 

 





 


 


Help RAWA: Order from our wish list on Amazon.com

RAWA Channel on Youtube

Follow RAWA on Twitter

Join RAWA on Facebook


  • August 14, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan: New Law Threatens Women’s Freedom
    Human Rights Watch: “Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “So much for any credentials he claimed as a moderate on women’s issues.” A copy of the final law seen by Human Rights Watch shows that many regressive articles remain, which strip away women’s rights that are enshrined in Afghanistan’s constitution. The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands.      Full news...

  • August 7, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Karzai family’s wealth ‘fuelling insurgency’
    The Telegraph.co.uk: The president's brothers, Mahmoud and Ahmed Wali, are accused of having amassed millions of pounds since Mr Karzai took office even as most of Afghanistan remains poverty stricken. The development has fuelled a popular disillusionment and anger with the leadership that the Taliban has exploited. Ahmed Wali Karzai has been dogged by allegations, which he denies, of involvement in the country's $3 billion opium trade, while Mahmoud Karzai has been accused of using his brother's influence to build a business empire that has made him one of the country's wealthiest men.      Full news...

  • August 4, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Amnesty International’s Ten-Point Agenda for Human Rights in Afghanistan
    Amnesty International: As the Afghan people prepare to go to the polls in elections on 20 August, Amnesty International today published a Ten-Point Agenda for Human Rights in Afghanistan, targeting the 38 presidential candidates, in a bid to improve the country’s desperate human rights situation. “We have spoken to many Afghan citizens who expressed frustration and anger towards the Afghan government’s apparent indifference to human rights,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International Director for Asia-Pacific.      Full news...

  • July 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Rape - The Most Vulnerable Victims of Corruption
    Inter Press Service: Being powerful in Afghanistan does not only mean that you can break the laws of government. It also means that you can abuse your fellow citizens in the most awful ways and never be punished. The rich and powerful in Afghanistan are known to rape women and young girls with impunity. The government's inability to stop these horrors have only encouraged those in positions of authority to continue abusing Afghanistan's most vulnerable.      Full news...

  • July 29, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Child Rapist Police Return Behind U.S., UK Troops
    Inter Press Service: The strategy of the major U.S. and British military offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province aimed at wresting it from the Taliban is based on bringing back Afghan army and police to maintain permanent control of the population, so the foreign forces can move on to another insurgent stronghold. But that strategy poses an acute problem: The police in the province, who are linked to the local warlord, have committed systematic abuses against the population, including the abduction and rape of pre-teen boys, according to village elders who met with British officers.      Full news...

  • July 24, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Fraud casts shadow over Afghan presidential vote
    Reuters: Buried outside his house near the Afghan capital, Haji Rozuddin keeps hundreds of fraudulent voter registration cards to sell to anyone wanting to vote in next month’s presidential election. “I’ll sell them in favor of any candidate. If someone says they’ll use them in favor of Karzai, I’ll be happy,” said a laughing Rozuddin, dozens of illegal voter registration cards scattered across the living room floor of his mud-brick house in Logar province, an hour’s drive south of the capital, Kabul.      Full news...

  • July 14, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Cost of insecurity impedes humanitarian work - analysis
    IRIN: Armoured vehicles, armed escorts, blast-resistant walls and other security measures have made humanitarian work in Afghanistan more expensive and risky than ever before, say analysts. “Due to insecurity in some regions of the country, WFP [the UN World Food Programme] has had to take extra measures to ensure the safety of its staff, as well as the safe delivery of its food, and these have related costs,” Susannah Nicol, WFP’s information officer in Kabul, told IRIN.      Full news...

  • July 10, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan: Led by donkeys
    The Guardian (Editorial): British soldiers are notionally dying to allow a national election to take place in Helmand. Unless miracles happen, this poll will usher in four more years of a corrupt narco-regime whose leader, Hamid Karzai, is the not-so-private despair of everyone from Barack Obama downwards. Even the US commander in charge of two provinces on Kabul's doorstep voices his frustration by warning in this newspaper today that Mr Karzai's re-election could trigger a violent backlash from Afghans yearning for a government they can trust. Colonel David Haight put it pithily: "Four more years of this crap?"      Full news...

  • July 7, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Violence against Afghan women, including rape, widespread and unpunished, says UN
    ReliefWeb: A new UN report on women in Afghanistan, issued Wednesday, describes the extensive and increasing level of violence directed at women taking part in public life, as well as the “widespread occurrence” of rape against a backdrop of institutional failure and impunity. The 32-page report, issued jointly by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), notes that “violence, in the public and private spheres, is an everyday occurrence in the lives of a huge proportion of Afghan women.”      Full news...

  • July 4, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Karzai's pardons nullify drug court gains
    Boston Globe: When five drug traffickers in military uniforms were caught transporting heroin in a police truck in 2007, it was a victory for a dogged team of Afghan investigators and their US mentors who are waging a Quixotic battle against narcotics, the nation's largest industry. But in April, Afghan president Hamid Karzai pardoned the five men. One was the nephew of a powerful politician managing Karzai's reelection campaign, and the presidential decree ordering their release notes that they had ties to a well-respected family, according to a senior Afghan official.      Full news...

  • July 4, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    News editor captures 'the real thing' in Afghanistan
    The Age: FRIENDS said he must have a death wish, going to Afghanistan. But online news editor Gregor Salmon was sick of watching disjointed images of the place on CNN. He wanted to find the truth behind the labels: the Taliban, warlords, guns and opium. And he was up for an adventure. With the help of local translators and "fixers", he spent eight months criss-crossing Afghanistan, interviewing hundreds of ordinary Afghans.      Full news...

  • June 30, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan group slams Karzai’s ‘warlord’ vote ticket
    AFP: An Afghan rights watchdog on Tuesday slammed President Hamid Karzai's choice of two "notorious warlords" for his August re-election bid and accused him of promising ministries to supporters. "Undemocratic forces that have constantly gained power and wealth over the past several years seem to be hijacking the election process to ensure their future interests and legitimise their grip on political and public institutions. These forces which include former and current warlords, militia commanders and human rights abusers have money, power and influence across the country which make them incomparably stronger than the ordinary voters," it said.      Full news...

  • June 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    U.S.-built bridge is windfall for Afghan drug trade
    McClatchy Newspapers: In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia's poorest countries. Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It's paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.      Full news...

  • June 27, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Power of the Poppy
    The Wall Street Journal: Today, the good, the bad and the ugly all flourish in Afghanistan—sometimes together, sometimes apart. But it’s not clear who is benefiting most from the drug trade. Is it the Taliban and al Qaeda or members of ­Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government? Statistics vary wildly, but the U.N. estimates that drugs bring in upward of $300 million annually to the Taliban’s coffers. That still leaves billions unaccounted for.      Full news...

  • June 23, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghanistan’s smuggler children
    Channel 4 News: Nima Elbagir travels to Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, where a programme to eradicate opium production has led to an upsurge of child smugglers. In Tsasubi, village elders told us that forced to abandon poppy farming, and receiving no help in creating alternative livelihoods, they had turned to smuggling.      Full news...

  • June 17, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Uphill struggle for potato farmers in Bamyan Province
    IRIN: Farmers in Afghanistan’s top potato-producing province are complaining about declining profits, mainly because of cold weather, lack of storage facilities and bad roads. Potato cultivation in Bamyan Province, central Afghanistan, employs thousands of people and output can top 150,000 tons a year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock.      Full news...


  • June 10, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Governor of Jowzjan Province Accused of Wasting Foreign Aid
    RAWA News: Mohammad Hashim Zare, the governor of Jowzjan province in Northern Afghanistan, has been accused of wasting the aid donated to the people of this province by Turkmenistan, central government and other organizations which has been sent to the flood-affected people in that province. Ferouza Quraishi, the deputy of the Provincial Council of Jowzjan called the governor inefficient” and said the aid has not reached those in need.      Full news...

  • June 4, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Faulted firm gets Afghan aid work from USAID
    USA TODAY: Despite Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's call to reduce the reliance on foreign aid contractors, the main U.S. aid agency is continuing to award multimillion-dollar contracts as it proposed to increase development spending in Afghanistan to $2.8 billion. An inspector general's audit released May 11 criticized DAI's performance on a $164 million contract to promote local governance. Success, the audit found, was "highly questionable" in part because DAI "had no overall strategy" for implementing local projects.      Full news...

  • May 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Aid expert says only pennies of foreign money reaching Afghans
    The Canadian Press: An international aid expert says only pennies from each dollar being sent to Afghanistan are actually reaching the people who need help. Marco Vicenzino says he is appalled by the inefficiency of humanitarian aid efforts. Vicenzino, who is a strategic adviser for the Afghanistan World Foundation, says about 80 cents of every dollar goes back to donor countries - largely through the contractors doing the work.      Full news...

  • May 23, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Public millions fail to provide wells, schools and clinics in Afghanistan
    The Times: Millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money have been wasted on failed reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, according to an internal assessment by the Department for International Development. An evaluation by independent consultants criticised the department’s approach to planning, risk management and staffing, and said poor co-ordination with the rest of Whitehall meant that the department was slow to shift strategy as the military effort moved to counter-insurgency.      Full news...

  • May 16, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    The warlords casting a shadow over Afghanistan
    The Independent: One of the most feared of the Afghan warlords, Faryadi Zardad, was notorious for robbing, raping, torturing and killing travellers on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad. He kept a savage assistant in a cave who would bite and rip the flesh of his victims; other captives were murdered or imprisoned until they died of their sufferings or bribes were paid for their release. Uniquely among the warlords of Afghanistan, many guilty of actions similar to his own, Zardad is in prison for his crimes.      Full news...

  • May 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Problems with Afghan Prisons Reported before Prostitution Scandal
    YLE.fi: suspicions of sexual exploitation of female inmates at the Maimana prison in Afghanistan were investigated already in the winter of 2007. The prison was built with the help of Finnish development cooperation funding. Last week it was reported that prostitution was taking place in another penal facility built with Finnish help – the Sheberghan women’s prison.      Full news...

  • May 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Drug trade permeates Afghanistan
    McClatchy Newspapers: Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which was worth some $3.4 billion to Afghan exporters last year. For a cut of that, Afghan officials open their highways to opium and heroin trafficking, allow public land to be used for growing opium poppies and protect drug dealers. The drug trade funnels hundreds of millions of dollars each year to drug barons and the resurgent Taliban, the militant Islamist group that's killed an estimated 450 American troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and seeks to overthrow the fledgling democracy here.      Full news...

  • May 11, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Afghan drug trade thrives with help, and neglect, of officials
    McClatchy Newspapers: The drug trade funnels hundreds of millions of dollars each year to drug barons and the resurgent Taliban, the militant Islamist group that's killed an estimated 450 American troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and seeks to overthrow the fledgling democracy here. What's more, Afghan officials' involvement in the drug trade suggests that American tax dollars are supporting the corrupt officials who protect the Taliban's efforts to raise money from the drug trade, money the militants use to buy weapons that kill U.S. soldiers.      Full news...

  • May 11, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Karzai’s brother threatened McClatchy writer reporting Afghan drug story
    McClatchy Newspapers: Ahmed Wali Karzai is feared by many in southern Afghanistan, and being threatened by him, in his home, isn't something to be taken lightly.In a place like Kandahar, I try to take precautions — letting my beard grow and wearing the traditional Afghan outfit of baggy pants and a long tunic — but at the end of the day, there's no protection when the most powerful official in the region orders you to leave. So after a quick consultation with locals, I decided to do just that.      Full news...

  • May 10, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    Only small-time Afghan drug dealers serve time
    McClatchy Newspapers: The Pul-I-Charki prison rises out of the dirt fields and mud walls on the edge of east Kabul like a medieval fortress, its castle towers surrounded by checkpoints and machine gun nests.The prison is meant to hold some of Afghanistan's worst criminals, those who officials fear would buy or fight their way out of provincial jails. However, when a reporter asked to interview big-time drug dealers being held there, especially from Helmand or Kandahar, prison officials said they had none.      Full news...

  • May 4, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    AFGHANISTAN: Flood emergency
    IRIN: Flash floods in the past two weeks have killed at least 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes, according to the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA), which has declared a nationwide state of emergency. Without the state of emergency we will not be able to save lives and keep the situation under control,” Abdul Matin Edrak, director of ANDMA, told IRIN in Kabul, adding that the aim was to “mitigate the impacts of severe floods”.      Full news...

  • April 23, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    School textbooks bogged down in Afghanistan
    The Associated Press: Millions of new textbooks promised and paid for by the U.S. and other foreign donors have not been delivered to schools in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has found. Other books were so poorly made they are already falling apart. The faltering effort is testimony to how much can be lost to corruption, inefficiency and bureaucracy in this tumultuous country, where it is difficult to get even the most straightforward aid project done.      Full news...

  • April 22, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
    UN warns of rise in Afghan hashish production
    AFP: Dishevelled and blind in one eye, the 57-year-old hashish dealer has no fear that police might try to stop the trade he conducts from a petrol station on the edge of the dirty Kabul River. "If you give them 100 afghani (two dollars) and a joint, they would say carry on," said the man who gives his name as Mahtaabudin. "I am not afraid of anyone," he said gruffly, only agreeing to talk after he has lit a cigarette of heady hashish made from cannabis resin which he shares with some of his customers on the station's verandah.      Full news...



< Previous 1 2 3 ... 20 21 22 ... 26 27 28 Next >