The Independent: Afghan journalists live and breathe their country's dream of a better future. But they also live under the shadow of its violent past.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Afghanistan' s attorney-general says criminal charges are pending against Abdul Rashid Dostum -- a senior military adviser to the president and a powerful ethnic Uzbek militia commander who allegedly abducted his former election campaign manager last weekend.      Full news...

ForeignPolicy.com: Someone please explain to me how this is supposed to be justice. A 23-year-old journalism student named Sayad Parwez Kambaksh supposedly goes online, finds an interesting paper, and prints it out. He supposedly brings it to class at Balkh University, discusses it with a teacher and some fellow students. The paper gets copied and distributed. Some students find it objectionable; they say it is offensive and that it insults Islam. They complain to the government.      Full news...

Associated Press: Gul Hussein was standing under a pale street lamp in a poor section of east Kabul when the entire neighborhood suddenly went black. “As you can see, it is dark everywhere,” the 62-year-old man said, adding that his family would light a costly kerosene lamp for dinner that evening. “Some of our neighbors are using candles, but candles are expensive, too.”      Full news...

BBC Persian: Mullah Naqibullah, one of the Taliban’s top commanders, has apparently escaped from prison and given several interviews to reporters. He claims he escaped by bribing security officials.      Full news...

Kabul Press: Mr. Gary K. Helseth, General Director of the 600 millionUSD-a-year United Nations Office of Project Services-Afghanistan(UNOPS) who had worked in Afghanistan for over 20 years, left the country two months after this report was first published. His U.N. e-mail addresses are not functional, and so far, we have been unable to contact him for additional information.      Full news...

ION: A man in his thirties suddenly threw himself on a busy road in Kabul and yelled, “kill me and drive over me. They can’t feed us; the easier way is to kill me and my children. Oh people, for God's sake, come and kill us,” shouted the apparently exhausted man lamenting the government's failure to provide him with a livelihood.      Full news...

BBC News: After two years in which the violence in Afghanistan has become worse, it is hard to see signs of hope in 2008. The detailed new international commitments, and promises of more money, put forward at the London Conference in January 2006, made little headway as the war against the Taliban went into a new phase.      Full news...

The CorpWatch: In September, on a tree-lined street in the most expensive neighborhood in Kabul, dozens of men rolled out of armored vehicles in front of a little-known U.S. security company. Backed up by Blackwater guards, Afghan authorities and Americans from the FBI and the U.S. State Department quickly headed for the offices of United States Protection and Investigations (USPI). Once inside, they arrested four of the Texas-based company's management team and confiscated 15 computers. The two Americans arrested were later released, while the Afghan managers remain in custody.      Full news...

IWPR: This has been the worst year so far for Afghan journalists, say media watchers. Afghanistan's media have enjoyed remarkable degree of freedom over the past six years, making this one of the most visible achievements of the post-Taliban era,. But increasingly, as security deteriorates and the public mood sours, media outlets are coming under pressure from government and other powerful elites.      Full news...

RAWA: But now through Australian media were informed that Sayad Anwar Shah and Sayed Zubair, both cousins of the well-known Afghan criminal Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf (fundamentalist leader of Itehad-e-Islami Party and currently member of the Afghan parliament), were running a religious school in Australia. But according to a recent news item in Australian papers, the director has been charged with fraud over the alleged theft of $355,934 from the college's federal funding.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan may not reap the full benefit from the biggest foreign investment in its history, a copper mine to be built by a Chinese company, if full safeguards are not set in place, an independent watchdog said on Wednesday.      Full news...

AFP: Corruption in Afghanistan, which reaches up to deputy-minister level in an administration permeated by mafia-like structures, poses a danger to the nation's efforts at stability and security, a watchdog said.      Full news...

IWPR: Private security companies are contributing to the rising tide of lawlessness, according to both Afghan and international experts. Former commanders, ex-special forces, demobilised militias – at times it seems like the streets of Kabul are crammed full of strongmen looking to capitalise on their most marketable skill – the ability and readiness to fight.      Full news...

BBC News: Digging into what the latest opinion poll really means, security still came out as the main concern, but of those polled who said things were moving in the wrong direction, the economy was at the top of their list.      Full news...

PoliticalAffairs.net: A spate of recent news reports indicates that the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is becoming a deeper disaster. It has been revealed that many victims of the Nov. 6 bombing in northern Baghlan province were children shot by government bodyguards. About 77 people died (including four members of the Afghan parliament), and another 100 were injured. According to an internal United Nations security report obtained on Nov. 19, bodyguards for the politicians shot at least 100 rounds of gunfire "deliberately and indiscriminately" into the crowd after the suicide bombing, and that schoolchildren bore "the brunt of the onslaught at close range."      Full news...

The Times: "The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes," said one analyst. Western and Afghan officials are also alarmed at how narco-kleptocracy has extended its grip around President Karzai, a figure regarded by some as increasingly isolated by a cadre of corrupt officials.      Full news...

Reuters: Too much aid to Afghanistan is wasted -- soaked up in contractors' profits, spent on expensive expatriate consultants or squandered on small-scale, quick-fix projects, a leading British charity said on Tuesday. Despite more than $15 billion of aid pumped into Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, many Afghans still suffer levels of poverty rarely seen outside sub-Saharan Africa.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has criticized members of his cabinet and deputies in parliament for corruption -- saying the problem is so widespread that it is setting back the reconstruction of the country. Karzai says the living conditions of ordinary Afghans are deteriorating every day while government officials think only about how to increase their personal wealth.      Full news...

BBC Persian (translated by RAWA): Members of Afghanistan parliament accuse some officials of Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul for raping women prisoners. A delegation of Afghan parliamentarians who recently visited the prison say some women become pregnant after being raped.      Full news...

Reuters: Corruption among Afghan officials is rife and government must be reformed to help end 30 years of war, misery and oppression, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday in an unusually frank assessment of his country's woes.      Full news...

Reuters: Private security contractors in Afghanistan add to the sense of insecurity, are often confused with foreign troops, employ former militiamen and may have links to crime, said an independent Swiss study published on Monday.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: A number of private security companies operating in conflict zones were engaging in new forms of mercenary activity, a United Nations team warned on Tuesday.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Some members of the Afghanistan parliament say that high ranking officials have prepared the opportunity for escape of Timor who was among supposed to be executed in Pul-Charkhi prison in Kabul along with 15 others.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Helmand, with a population of 1.4 million and an area roughly the size of Switzerland, is among the largest of Afghanistan's southwestern provinces. Its vast expanse of desert and arid mountains border Pakistan and stretch to within 100 kilometers of Iran. At the heart of the battle for Afghanistan's future, Helmand also is inarguably the country's most troubled province.      Full news...

IRIN News: Relief operations in insecure parts of Afghanistan are highly vulnerable to waste and corruption, local officials, residents, aid officials and analysts say. "The spending imperative, the weakness of the Afghan government, and insecurity have contributed to a high risk of corruption in 'postwar' Afghanistan," stated a July 2007 report by humanitarian think-tank Overseas Development Institute (ODI).      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: The burgeoning drug commerce would be hard to rein in if high-ranking government officials involved in narcotics smuggling were not prosecuted, a senior official warned on Thursday. First Vice-President Ahmad Zia Masood, addressing a ceremony that marked the opening of a Counter-Narcotics Police complex, said: We should admit that some top-ranking government officials are unfortunately linked to the smuggling of drugs.      Full news...

IRIN New: Increasing armed robberies and abductions are causing widespread concern in Herat, a relatively peaceful province in western Afghanistan. In one of the most recent cases, over 600 workers at a flourmill in Herat Province lost their jobs when the company was shut down after its owner was abducted by armed men in September.      Full news...

CBS News: American doctor Dave Warner is on a mission in eastern Afghanistan to show people back home how billions of taxpayer dollars sent here are being wasted.      Full news...

The Los Angeles Times: Former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld says in the current edition of GQ magazine that the war in Afghanistan has been "a big success," with people living in freedom and life "improved on the streets." To anyone working in the country, there is only one possible, informed response: What Afghanistan is the man talking about?      Full news...