The Guardian: Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission. The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.      Full news...

AP: The Afghan government had arrested two TV presenters, one for a programme apparently offensive to Muslim clerics and another for interviewing a Taliban spokesman, a media watchdog said Tuesday.Reporters Without Borders said it was "disturbed" by Monday's arrests of Fahim Kohdamani of Emroz television, who is still being held, and Ajmal Alamzai of Ariana TV, who was released just before midnight Monday.      Full news...

AFP: Afghan officials said five men killed in a US-led raid Sunday were all civilians, countering a statement from the military that said they were militants from a "terrorist network." The claim was the latest in a string of allegations of civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces who are in Afghanistan to fight against insurgents, including Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.      Full news...

IRIN: "We feel disappointed, isolated and oppressed," said Ravil Singh, a Sikh leader in Nangarhar Province, eastern Afghanistan, adding that local people "are good to us". "We have too many problems but we get no help to solve them. A lot of our houses, shops and other properties have been seized by powerful people, commanders and warlords.      Full news...

Daily Times: Respect for press freedom has fallen sharply in recent weeks in Afghanistan, a fact-finding mission report by international media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders said on Monday. The Paris-based organisation’s report said, “The murder of Jawed Ahmad, a reporter for various Canadian news media in Kandahar, the newspaper Payman’s closure as a result of pressure from conservatives and the government, and the supreme court’s confirmation of Perwiz Kambakhsh’s 20-year jail sentence are all evidence that press freedom is in serious crisis.”      Full news...

PAN: Officials in central Logar province say five members of the same family were killed in a raid by the US-led coalition forces last night. Spokesman for the provincial governor, Din Mohammad Darvish, told Pajhwok Afghan News Saturday that the US forces raided the house of one Abdul Rashid last night, killing him and his four sons in Naw Khar village of the Charkh district.      Full news...

The Independent: My brother is an innocent man. He has already spent more than a year in jail, and he's been sentenced to 20 more years in prison. But the warlords and the murderers who are in power, they are free. It's a joke. People are angry. They are fundamentalists. Some of them are criminals. Some of them are powerful. Some of them are in the government, and they are playing political games with the fate of an innocent man. We must struggle for justice. We must struggle for free speech. Our society cannot live without these values.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Freedom of expression in Afghanistan faces increasing threats from the government as well as anti-government forces, Amnesty International warned today. Amnesty International learnt on Monday that the Supreme Court, on 11 February 2009, secretly upheld the 20-year prison sentence handed down to student and journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh on blasphemy charges.'If President Karzai is serious about defending free expression in Afghanistan, he should immediately and unconditionally pardon Kambakhsh,' said Zarifi.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of Lashkargah, capital city of southern Helmand province, on Wednesday staged a protest demonstration against the US-led coalition forces and Afghan government. They alleged that a civilian was killed and another wounded when a shell hit them in Spini Kotta area of the city during an operation by the foreign forces last night.      Full news...

Globe and Mail: A young man who helped Canadian reporters gather news in Afghanistan and was imprisoned by U.S. forces for nearly a year of self-described “hell” was gunned down Tuesday in the centre of Kandahar city. A week before he died, Mr. Ahmad sent e-mails to several Canadian journalists asking for help leaving the country. He wanted letters in support of a Canadian visa application, hoping to leave Afghanistan this spring, but he did not explain his eagerness to get away so quickly.      Full news...

Frontline: “Nothing has changed for us in this new Afghanistan,” said 16-year-old Seema, in early 2007, whose father was killed by a U.S. “liberating” bomb in October 2001. IN a widely quoted recent interview (on the National Public Radio network), Sarah Chayes proclaims, “Taliban Terrorising Afghanistan”. Afghanistan’s problems, Sarah Chayes implies that Afghanistan’s troubles call for military solutions.4 Give birth to “human rights” and electoral democracy with U.S. precision bombs and Special Forces.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: Afghan President Hamid Karzai should issue a pardon for Parwez Kambakhsh, a student and part-time journalist, whose 20-year prison sentence for blasphemy has been upheld by the Supreme Court, Human Rights Watch said today. The Supreme Court decision was the final stage in a highly politicized case that has repeatedly flouted Afghan and international law and highlighted the lack of professionalism among the Afghan judiciary.      Full news...

SBS: Dateline speaks with an Afghan family who claim to have witnessed several children being killed when Australian troops stormed their home in Oruzgan Province. Out of at least six people killed in the battle, five were children. We bring you an exclusive interview with the family of those children, who claim it happened without warning or provocation. This is how Australia first learnt that five children had been killed by ADF soldiers serving in Afghanistan.      Full news...

USA Today: Afghan demonstrators blocked the path of a U.S. military convoy in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday after an overnight U.S. raid killed four Afghans and wounded two, an official and protesters said. Protesters in the eastern city of Khost threw rocks at the convoy, shouted "Death to America" and burned tires in the road, sending up dark plumes of smoke. Several hundred men gathered in the street, preventing the vehicles from passing.      Full news...

UNAMA: The High Commissioner noted that there has been a dramatic increase in threats and intimidation against women in public life or who work outside the home. Women working with government agencies, national and international organisations, journalists, police, and lawyers have all reported death-threat letters and phone calls. As a result, many women in public life have been forced to curtail their activities or abandon their jobs. The report calls for the protection of women and girls in both the private and public sphere and this must be translated into policies and concrete programmes.      Full news...

PAN: A furious husband, suspecting his wife of having illicit relations with another person, has reportedly cut off her ears in western Ghor province. Sherin Taj, 30, resident of Khoranj village of Charsadad district suffered the torture from her husband Abdul Qader on Monday night. Masuma Anawari, head of Women Affairs Department in the province told Pajhwok Afghan News Abdul Qader after badly beating his wife also cut off her ears and hairs with scissors.      Full news...

AFP: A joint inquiry by the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan and Afghan authorities has concluded that eight civilians were killed during a recent battle with insurgents in the south. In a joint statement, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the government of Helmand province said 17 other civilians were wounded in the February 23 firefight which erupted when an ISAF patrol was ambushed.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Afghan civilians will bear the brunt of an escalation in the Afghan war this year as thousands more U.S. troops deploy unless more is done by NATO forces and Taliban militants to protect them, a top Red Cross official said Monday. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are "significantly higher" today than a year ago, and an intensification of the conflict this year could mean that consequences for many more Afghans will be "dire in the extreme," said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross.      Full news...

Amnesty International: President Barack Obama approved the deployment of extra troops in Afghanistan last week and urged NATO allies to follow suit. "2008 was the most violent year for civilians since the fall of the Taleban and Afghans are increasingly resentful about civilians casualties caused by international forces during night raids and other actions of this sort," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director.. "The challenge for the USA and its allies is to ensure that the surge of international troops into the country will provide better security for Afghans, and not put them at greater risk."      Full news...

RIA Novosti: Hundreds of Afghans in the southern city of Kandahar protested the deaths of two boys, believed to have been killed by a Canadian rocket. Some media sources reported the children were killed when a missile hit a house in the Panjwai village. Five other people were injured. However Canadian media reported that the children may have died when an unexploded bomb detonated as they searched for scrap metal in the Panjwai valley. A local police chief said the deaths may have been caused by a Taliban attack.      Full news...

IRIN: Dozens of people involved in relief work were kidnapped and/or killed in 2008 and large consignments of aid items were pillaged by insurgents and criminal groups, according to the UN. Ahmad Wali (not his real name) works for a local NGO in Logar Province, about 60 km south of Kabul and where four employees of the International Rescue Committee were killed by unidentified armed men in August 2008. Wali spoke to IRIN about the risks he faces.      Full news...

The Mail: President Obama has angered human rights groups by saying terror suspects seized in Afghanistan cannot challenge their detention in US courts. The US Justice Department says 600 ‘enemy combatants’ held at Bagram air base have no constitutional rights. Human rights groups had hoped Mr Obama would take a different stance to George W. Bush’s.      Full news...

RAWA News: If Afghan victims of American or NATO forces get mentioned at all in the mainstream press, it is the dead. Those permanently maimed in “precision” air strikes or midnight assaults by U.S. Special Forces hardly ever are worthy of notice. Yet, such attacks result in injured as well as wounded; indeed, the ratio of wounded to civilians killed in the predominant air attacks in Afghanistan during the initial U.S. bombing campaign was about 1.8 to 1. This ratio has likely decreased as the fighting became more lethally focused, but a decreasing ratio raises the specter of war crimes having been committed against civilians.      Full news...

Focus Information Agency: The document, prepared by the Pentagon on behalf of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan and seen by The Independent, also reveal how swathes of the country have slipped out of the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government. According to a poll taken towards the end of last year, a third of the population stated that the Taliban had more influence in their locality. he growing unpopularity of Mr Karzai, along with accusations of corruption against figures associated with his government, has led the new US administration to repeatedly warn the Afghan President he will lose Washington’s support in the coming national elections unless there are drastic changes.      Full news...

IWPR: US forces in Afghanistan claim to have killed up to 15 militants associated with an infamous warlord in Herat province in an airstrike, but district officials and eyewitnesses say that the dead were a family of Kuchis, or nomads, who were camped out nearby. Ghulam Mahboob Afzalzada, district governor of Gozara, insisted the strike had claimed the lives of Kuchis, a nomadic people who shepherd their animals throughout the country. Eyewitness say six women, five men, and four children in the village of Karez Sultan were killed in the strike. Several hundred animals are also said to have been killed there.      Full news...

AP: The number of Afghan civilians killed in armed conflict surged to a record 2,118 people last year as the Afghan war turned increasingly bloody, the U.N. said in a new report Tuesday. The deaths rose 40 percent last year, and the numbers could grow as the United States plans to shift tens of thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan this year to take on the Taliban and other militants.      Full news...

Daily News: An Afghan diplomat was charged Friday with beating his wife "like a dog" for more than 15 hours in their Queens home, prosecutors said. Mohammed Fagirad, 30, a vice consul at the Afghanistan Consulate, brutalized his wife inside their Flushing home from about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday until nearly midnight, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. During the attack, Fagirad bit, slapped, choked and beat the 22-year-old woman with a belt, pushed her down a flight of stairs and sat on her chest, prosecutors said.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan condemned on Friday the killing of civilians in a raid by Australian soldiers in the south of the country which it says was not coordinated with Afghan forces. The Australian Defence Force said five children had been killed in a shootout between Taliban insurgents and Australian Special Forces in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday, where they were "clearing" a number of compounds.      Full news...

PAN: 16 cases of self-immolation have been registered in Badghis province while the total numbers of cases of violence against women were 33 during last 11 months. Aqila, 18, mother of three children who married three years back said: "I was not happy with marriage, my father married me to a 40 year old man on 0.4 million afghanis, my husband was beating me up and my mother in law was insulting me without any reason"      Full news...

BBC News: An assault on three government buildings in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has left at least 27 people, including eight attackers, dead. The interior ministry said overall 35 people were injured. The attacks come in the week the new US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, is expected to visit Kabul.      Full news...