IWPR: Remote Afghan province is home to major trading post for heroin destined for Europe and arms for Taliban and other militants. In the middle of the river, local mafiosi cut deals that will arm Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, as well as al-Qaeda and other militant groups in the wider region. In return for Russian-made weapons, they trade Afghan heroin that will eventually be sold on the streets of European cities. The major profits go to those with the clout to call on adequate protection. “The big smugglers are backed by governments in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia,” he said. “These smugglers can pay huge amounts of money. But we don’t do badly.”      Full news...

Los Angeles Times: In a gruesome public spectacle, Taliban-linked militants on Friday executed two Afghan men accused of spying for the United States, slitting their throats and parading their severed heads before a cheering crowd.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Afghan opium poppy cultivation grew 17 percent last year, continuing a six-year expansion of the country's drug trade and increasing its share of global opium production to more than 92 percent, according to the 2008 World Drug Report, released Thursday by the United Nations. Afghanistan's emergence as the world's largest supplier of opium and heroin represents a serious setback to U.S. policy in the region. The opium trade has soared since the U.S.-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, which had eradicated almost all of the country's opium poppies.      Full news...

AFP: Hundreds of protesters took to streets in eastern Afghanistan on Monday after a father and son were allegedly killed by gunfire from US-led soldiers, a governor and witnesses said. Around 200 people demonstrated in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province.      Full news...

The Observer: British special forces operating on the border between Afghanistan and Iran have uncovered fresh evidence that Tehran is actively backing insurgents fighting UK troops. Documented proof that Iran is supplying the Taliban with devastating roadside bomb-making equipment has been passed by British officials to Tehran, prompting fears that the war in Afghanistan may escalate into a regional armed conflict.      Full news...

Toronto Star: There's a lot we know about Afghanistan and a lot more we don't. An expert who knows much more than most of us – whose prescient insights I have benefited from for a decade and whom the John Manley commission consulted last year – says Afghanistan will get worse in the coming months.      Full news...

Sky News: For many citizens of this, one of the poorest countries on the planet, life is still exceedingly tough and it is no exaggeration to say they have a daily struggle to survive. No jobs, no money and hope fading fast. "Afghanistan cannot be rebuilt with corrupt people," says Malalai Joya, expelled MP. "Our Government is undemocratic. We have a mafia system where drug lords and war lords are in power with the mask of democracy."      Full news...

The Guardian: The number of Afghan children discovered being smuggled through Dover has risen dramatically in the last 12 months after a surge in violence between Taliban and Nato forces in Afghanistan.      Full news...

The New York Times: In a brazen attack, Taliban fighters assaulted the main prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday night, blowing up the mud walls, killing 15 guards and freeing around 1,200 inmates. Among the escapees were about 350 Taliban members, including commanders, would-be suicide bombers and assassins, said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council and a brother of President Hamid Karzai.      Full news...

The Telegraph: In a confidential Government paper seen by the Daily Telegraph, diplomats warn Mr Brown that the growing Afghan opium trade will prolong the Taliban insurgency and say the Kabul government's failure to tackle corruption is fuelling popular resentment. In a briefing paper for the Prime Minister marked "Confidential," UK diplomats say that Mr Karzai is refusing to taken on the drug lords and has allowed major players in the Afghan opium trade to take up senior government posts.      Full news...

The Observer: The other Afghanistan is largely ignored. This has 30 million people in whose name the war is being fought. Its themes are disappointment, bitterness and pessimism: a conviction that the vast intervention to rebuild the world's fourth poorest country has benefited only a small handful, and Afghanistan is heading for a new crisis. As even some Western diplomats are beginning to acknowledge, the prevailing fear is that the war is in danger not of being lost or won in Helmand province, but in the perceptions of Afghans.      Full news...

PAN: An upcoming freelance journalist, working for Pajhwok Afghan News in the insurgency-torn southern province of Helmand, has been shot dead by unidentified gunmen. The dead body of Abdul Samad Rohani, who went missing last evening while driving from the Nawa district to the provincial capital Lashkargah, was found in a graveyard Sunday afternoon.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Ever since he was caught three months ago in Afghanistan's Khost Province trying to carry out a suicide attack, 14-year-old Shakirullah has been pondering how he went from childhood in Pakistan to imprisonment in Kabul as an international terrorist.      Full news...

BBC Persian: UN has accused some governmental authorities for having connections with armed, irresponsible groups. According to Afghan authorities and UN, till now more than 300 irresponsible armed bands of have been dissolved but there are about 2000 others in the country. UN and the Defense Ministry of Afghanistan said that most of these groups are involved in terrorist activities, smuggling of drugs and planned crimes.      Full news...

SocialistWorker.org: A U.S. Marine Corps general has decided not to bring criminal charges against two officers who led their unit on a March 2007 killing spree that left 19 Afghan civilians dead and 50 more wounded. By contrast, the U.S. media barely noticed. For its part, the New York Times featured an article on Afghanistan a few days later celebrating a "fierce battle" by a Marine unit that drove Taliban fighters outside of the southern town of Garmser. The article referenced last March's massacre--but not the Marines' decision not to press charges.      Full news...

VOA: Greater freedom for the women of Afghanistan was one of the promises of the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. U.S. and Afghan officials say there have been significant improvements, noting that some two million women and girls are now attending school, something that was forbidden under the extremist Taliban government. But despite Western efforts, many Afghan women say their lives have not improved significantly and an increasing number of women are committing suicide by burning themselves to death as a way to escape physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Mandy Clark reports from Kabul.      Full news...

PAN: Two senators from Helmand told reporters in Kabul on Monday that many civilians were killed, wounded and displaced during the operation by NATO and Afghan forces. Haji Mahboob Garmsiri, a senator from the district, and Haji Sher Muhammad Akhunzada, head of the parliamentary committee for internal safety in the senate also from Helmand, said that the civilians were the worst sufferers in the operation.      Full news...

Tolo TV: Some representatives of Helmand province in the Parliament say that military operations of the American forces have been taking place in this district in the past two weeks and the forces have also killed and imprisoned civilians. These representatives demanded serious attention from the government regarding the matter. The civilians in Garmsir District of Helmand Province are living in terrible conditions.      Full news...

World Socialist Web Site: A United Nations investigator released a preliminary report last week citing widespread civilian deaths in Afghanistan, often at the hands of unaccountable units led by the CIA or other foreign intelligence agencies. Alston focused on civilian killings by US and other international military forces, citing 200 reported deaths in the first four months of 2008.      Full news...

Adnkronos International: Taliban fighters in Afghanistan claim to have killed a woman by slitting her throat after accusing her of spying for US forces in Afghanistan.      Full news...

The Guardian: In an article I wrote in 2003, when I was still working in the country, I argued that "good governance, respect for human rights and the rule of law are not optional when it comes to rebuilding a country, but an intrinsic part of reconstruction." This week a UN expert made almost exactly the same point when he warned of "staggeringly high" complacency about civilians being killed by international troops and that foreign intelligence units may be carrying out death-squad type killings with impunity.      Full news...

AFP: A FEMALE Afghani journalist was stabbed and wounded today, authorities said, a day after unknown men threatened to kill her unless she quit her job at a local television station. "A woman came to my home and asked for a glass of water. As I was to bring her water she stabbed me in abdomen," Ms Habibi said.      Full news...

Intermediadialogue.org: Although, the international media organizations have published detailed reports on the condition of freedom of speech and press in Afghanistan, but the real situation is something different from these reports. Because some of these organizations are either very conservative or are linked to the fundamentalist figures inside the government in order to keep their jobs safe. Therefore, we cannot trust the honesty in their works and reports.      Full news...

Toronto Star: Six years after the fall of the Taliban, the cocooning burqa hangs on, even in a liberated capital rushing headlong into modernity, as if leaping millennia in one breathless hurdle. Tradition, family pressures, shyness and a sense of personal security without violation – all are given as reasons for clutching still to the metres of billowing fabric that cascade from scalp to ankle.      Full news...

The Independent: The city is awash with widows who have come with the same idea. It is one of Kabul's many problems, this influx of desperate humanity that has flooded the city with double, treble the people it ever housed before the Russian invasion in 1979. Three-quarters of Afghans are almost completely illiterate. Among widows, the proportion is much higher. Kabul is awash with street children, hundreds of thousands of them, scavenging through rubbish, selling plastic bags, repairing bicycles, labouring for shoe-makers, or asking for alms in return for sending unwelcome wafts of aromatic smoke from the tin cans they wave at likely-looking passers-by.      Full news...

Xinhua: The United Nations Special Rapporteuron extra judicial executions Philip Alston on Thursday expressed concern over civilians' killing in Afghanistan and urged all warring sides in the country to respect human rights. "In the past four months, hundreds of civilians have been killed. They have died from bombs, missiles, explosive devices, police fire, beheadings and domestic violence," Alston said in a statement handed out at a news briefing here.      Full news...

IRIN News: The killing and abduction of dozens of health workers in the past two years has prompted officials to shut down at least 36 health facilities in Afghanistan’s volatile southern and eastern provinces, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of basic health services, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).      Full news...

Daily Times: Pakistani society was ‘militarised’ with ‘active support’ from the United States as part of the ‘critical evolution’ of the ‘big powers’’ policy for the region, the Awami National Party (ANP)’s Afrasiab Khattak said on Wednesday.      Full news...

AP: The United Nations on Saturday was investigating reports that a controlled explosion of old ordnance has caused more damage to one of the famed Bamiyan Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban seven year ago.      Full news...

The Times: President Karzai narrowly escaped with his life yesterday after Taliban gunmen attacked an Independence Day ceremony in Kabul, sending ambassadors and generals diving for cover, and dealing a fresh blow to Afghanistan's fragile security.      Full news...