Counter Punch: As Taliban fighters enter Kabul, everybody from the US government to local policemen seeks to reach a deal with the new rulers of Afghanistan. Alternatively, they want to flee the country as soon as possible.      Full news...

Counter Punch: One of the doctrinal principles behind U.S. corporate-imperial news coverage and commentary and mainstream US politics is that the United States is a fundamentally benevolent force for good facing difficulties created by evil others and challenging situations not of Washington’s own making. Debate is permissible on immediate strategy and tactics but is not allowed on these core American Exceptionalist positions.      Full news...

Counter Punch: President Biden put a popular flag-waving wrapping on America’s forced withdrawal from Afghanistan in his 4 PM speech on Monday. It was as if all this was following Biden’s own intentions, not a demonstration of the totally incompetent assurances by the CIA and State Department as recently as last Friday that the Taliban was over a month away from being able to enter Kabul. Instead of saying that the massive public support for the Taliban replacing the United States showed the incompetent hubris of U.S. intelligence agencies – which itself would have justified Biden’s agreement to complete the withdrawal with all haste – he doubled down on his defense of the Deep State and its mythology.      Full news...

India Today: A young woman was allegedly killed by the Taliban for wearing tight clothes and not being accompanied by a male relative in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province.“The woman was shot dead in the village of Samar Qand, which is controlled by Taliban," a report by Radio Azadi said in Afghanistan.      Full news...

Nasdaq: KABUL, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Suspected Taliban fighters killed an Afghan radio station manager in Kabul and kidnapped a journalist in southern Helmand province, local government officials said on Monday, reporting the latest in a long line of attacks targeting media workers.      Full news...

BBC News: An Afghan defence ministry spokesman told the BBC government forces were still in the city and would clear out the Taliban "soon".This is the second regional capital to fall to the militants, after Zaranj in the south-western province of Nimroz fell on Friday.It is a major blow to security forces, with battles raging across the country.      Full news...

DW: The Taliban's political spokesperson Mohammad Naim told Al-Jazeera TV on Sunday that the radical Islamist group had no ceasefire agreement with the Afghan government and warned the US against further intervention.He also blamed the government for the fighting, calling them the aggressors and claimed the Taliban's attacks were a response.      Full news...

Aljazeera: Kandahar, Afghanistan – Last week, Kawsar Sama and her family packed up their belongings and got on a flight to the capital city of Kabul. For the 21-year-old and her family, life in the southern city of Kandahar had become dangerous as the Taliban has pushed into the districts surrounding Afghanistan’s second-largest city in recent weeks.      Full news...

Ariana News: A well-known local comedian, Nazar Mohammad, who was known as Khasha Jawan, was gunned down on Tuesday, allegedly by the Taliban, in Kandahar, sparking widespread condemnation. According to sources, Khasha Jawan was assaulted by the militants before being killed.      Full news...

The Globe And Mail: Chris Alexander was Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, the UN deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan, Canada’s minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the author of The Long Way Back: Afghanistan’s Quest for Peace. He also wrote a paper in March on Ending Pakistan’s Proxy War.      Full news...

Hindustan Time: The Taliban shot and killed 43 civilians and security force members after the group attacked the Malistan district in Afghanistan's central province of Ghazni earlier this month, residents have said. “Taliban fighters after entering Malistan district committed war crimes and killed civilians who were not involved in the fighting," Mina Naderi, a civil society activist from Ghazni, said at a press conference in Kabul on Sunday, according to Tolo News.      Full news...

TOLO News: Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) on Saturday said that 33 people were assassinated in Kandahar over the past two weeks.“Religious scholars, tribal elders, civil society activists, journalists and human rights defenders and female journalists are being sacrificed in targeted attacks,” said Zabihullah Farhang, spokesman to AIHRC      Full news...

The New York Times: KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban pushed their way into a provincial capital in Afghanistan’s northwest on Wednesday, freeing prisoners there and threatening to overrun the city itself.Details were murky from the city, Qala-e-Naw, the capital of Badghis Province, where fighting was widespread. Videos posted on social media showed some residents welcoming Taliban fighters on motorbikes as they entered.      Full news...

CounterPunch: “We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and it will Help Bankrupt us. One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s modern history — to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947…” – Chalmers Johnson. Dismantling the Empire – America’s Last Best Hope      Full news...

Many Afghans who hoped the Taliban would reform their extreme views amid ongoing talks with the Afghan government and the U.S. troop withdrawal have been disappointed by the new severe restrictions imposed on the local population in some of the districts that they have recently captured.      Full news...

AP News: KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban fighters took control of a key district in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province Monday and encircled the provincial capital, police said, as the insurgent group added to its recent battlefield victories while peace talks have stalemated.The Taliban’s gains came as the Pentagon reaffirmed the U.S. troop withdrawal was still on pace to conclude by early September.      Full news...

AP: KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Gunmen on Tuesday targeted an anti-polio drive in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least five members of two vaccination teams in separate attacks, officials said.No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks that took place in the city of Jalalabad and the nearby districts of Khoyani and Surkhrud, according to Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor in Nangarhar province. Jalalabad is the provincial capital.      Full news...

Aljazeera: At least seven people have been killed and six wounded as separate bombs hit two commuter minivans in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, according to officials.The explosions on Saturday hit vehicles on the same road about 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) apart in a western Kabul neighbourhood largely populated by members of the ethnic Hazara minority.      Full news...

The Guardian: Gunmen have killed 10 men working for the Halo Trust in northern Afghanistan, in a night-time assault that the mine-clearing charity’s head described as the worst the organisation had endured.Attackers burst into a Halo Trust camp in Baghlan province shortly before 10pm on Tuesday, where about 110 men, mostly drawn from local communities, were resting after a day’s work clearing old explosives.      Full news...

TOLO News: Mina Khairi, a presenter at Ariana News, and her mother are among the victims of Thursday afternoon’s blast in Kabul that killed four people, the head of the Ariana News, Sharif Hassanyar, confirmed. Mina’s sister was wounded in the incident.She went home from the office on Thursday and then went outside with her mother and sister to buy food. They took a minivan and were on their way home when the blast happened.      Full news...

Pajwok Afghan News: KANDAHAR CITY (Pajhwok): A police woman was among three people killed in targeted attacks in southern Kandahar province on Friday, officials said.Former Dand district police chief Abdullah’s brother and a civilian were also killed in the three separate attacks in the province – birthplace of the Taliban movement.      Full news...

VOA News: ISLAMABAD - The Taliban seized a district in southern Afghanistan Friday without facing any resistance from Afghan government security forces, bringing to seven the number of districts the insurgents have overrun since the United States and its NATO allies began withdrawing their troops from the country a month ago.Separately, an overnight roadside bombing of a vehicle in the national capital, Kabul, killed a young female Afghan television anchor and her mother, and wounded her sister. Mina Khairi was working for the Ariana News channel for the past three years, her employer said.      Full news...

Aljazeera: Three bombs rattled the Afghan capital Kabul killing at least 10 people and plunging the city into darkness, an Afghan government spokesman has said.Two bombs exploded in quick succession in separate locations of a west Kabul neighborhood late on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding a dozen others, said deputy Interior Ministry spokesman Said Hamid Rushan.      Full news...

DW: A mortar shell struck a wedding ceremony in northern Afghanistan overnight, killing at least six people and wounding four others, a police spokesman said Sunday.Most of the dead were children, spokesman Shayeq Shoresh said.The attack happened in the district of Tagab, in Kapisa province, which has seen intense clashes between Afghan government forces and Taliban militants.      Full news...

ABC News: KABUL, Afghanistan -- Roadside bombings in southern and central Afghanistan killed 13 people, including nine members of one family, officials said Thursday. Meanwhile, militants stopped a bus in western Afghanistan, ordered three men to get out and shot and killed them.No one has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks. The three men on the bus were ethnic Hazaras. The government blamed the Taliban, who denied responsibility. Previous attacks on Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims, have been claimed by the Islamic State group.      Full news...

Reuters: An explosion inside a mosque on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul killed at least 12 people during Friday prayers as worshippers gathered for the Eid al-Fitr holiday during a ceasefire.The Taliban insurgent group, which declared the three-day truce for the holiday, condemned the attack in a statement.      Full news...

TOLO News: On the first day of Eid-al-Fitr, at the beginning of a 3-day ceasefire between the Taliban and Afghan forces, explosions in Kandahar and Kunduz provinces killed nine people and injured 17.Two landmines exploded in Kandahar province--one in Panjwai and the other in Maiwand district--killing seven civilians and wounding three others.      Full news...

BBC: The bomb went off late on Friday close to a guesthouse where the students were reportedly staying in Pul-e-Alam, the capital of eastern Logar province.Dozens of people were hurt. Witnesses described roofs collapsing and victims being trapped under the debris.No group has said it was behind the blast as people broke their fast in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.      Full news...

The Guardian: Outside a college from which their mothers were banned, the women waited for friends finishing exams they fear will be some of the last they can take. “The Americans are leaving,” said Basireh Heydari, a Herat University student. “We have terrible days ahead with the Taliban. I’m worried they won’t let me leave the house, let alone what I’m doing now.”The Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by 11 September will bring an end to the US’s longest war.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: (New York) – Taliban forces are deliberately targeting journalists and other media workers, including women, in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. Threats and attacks against journalists across the country have increased sharply since talks began between the Afghan government and the Taliban, heightening concerns about preserving freedom of expression and the media in any peace settlement.      Full news...