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...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: An 11-year-old child bride sits next to her 40-year-old fiance. For UNICEF, this was the Photo of the Year. Dutch writer Leon de Winter laments the perversity of this wedding picture and the frightening relativism of the West.      Full news...

IRIN News: Children are being recruited and in some cases sexually abused by the Afghan police and/or various militias that support the police, as well as by private security companies and the Taliban, according to human rights and provincial officials.      Full news...

AntiWar.com: Hamid Karzai is the grandson of Khair Mohammed of the village of Karz, not far from Kandahar. He was an indigent member of the Popalzai tribe with a large family who migrated to Kandahar seeking a better life. Normally, when a Pashtun is of noble stock he's known by a patronym, but more humble tribal members do not have that privilege. Therefore, perforce they resort to descriptive names like Karzai, Pashto for "born in Karz."      Full news...

CanWest News: Gullalai doesn't dream of a better life for her 16-year-old son Iqbar. His growth and education have been stunted by a childhood disease that's left him unable to walk to school with his 10-year-old brother Feroz.      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...

Linchpin (Issue One): Afghanistan has been a primary focus of the so called War on Terror since the events of September 11th and as a result, the already fractured society has been pushed even deeper into chaos, destruction and violence.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The British Army says it is "taking seriously" claims that children were shot and several adult villagers had their throats cut during a secret military operation by unidentified forces in Helmand province.      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...

IWPR: Residents of a southern village tell of a night of violence at the hands of foreign and Afghan soldiers. Abdul Manaan claims he suffered slashes to his neck during a nighttime raid which locals say was carried out by a mixed force of foreign and Afghan troops helicoptered into Toube on November 18. Eyewitnesses say the soldiers killed 18 civilians in an attack that was brutal even by the standards of the Afghan conflict.      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: Journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi says his brother Parwez has been jailed and threatened with death because of his own reporting on human rights violations in the north.      Full news...

Daily Mail: Shown together for the first time, this is Osama Bin Laden and the son who rejected his terror creed and went on to marry an English parish councillor. Omar Bin Laden, now 26, was just 15 when he was pictured with the father he describes as gentle and kind, with a love of football and a great sense of humour.      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...

Pajhwak Afghan News: Residents of Wazikhwa district of the Pakthika province live in constant fear of being struck by Taliban insurgents. "Visiting this area is not without risk," says Khair Mohammad, an elderly person, standing by a deserted shop.      Full news...

The Times: A suicide bomber packed a car with explosives and blew it up next to a minibus transporting Afghan soldiers early today, killing at least 16 people, including several children.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Around 60 children have died of pneumonia in the Kiran-wa-Manjan district of the northeastern Badakhshan, residents claimed on Monday. But the Public Health Ministry officials rejected their claim as exaggerated.      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...

IRIN News: Abdul Samad was 17 when he lost his legs in a landmine explosion in Helmand Province in 1998. He wanted to commit suicide when he first realised his disability, but his family kept him alive. Nine years later, although he has five children, he thinks his problems have only mounted. "My children are also deprived of a happy life because of my disability," he said.      Full news...

By Marc W. Herold: Thought and language, which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, are the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of human consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness...      Full news...

OneWorld: US war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq.      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...

AFP: International war planes going after insurgents in northeastern Afghanistan struck a road construction camp and killed 14 workers, leaving many unrecognisable, officials said Wednesday.      Full news...

IRIN News: Razmi Khan, 12, was once the most outstanding student in his class, but is unable to go to school. He was badly wounded by a missile as he walked to a mosque in Nader Shah Kot District in the southeastern province of Khost on 17 November. He was taken to a local hospital where surgeons amputated his left leg to save his life.      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...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Some 200 former Mujahideen commanders from the northeastern four provinces, in a meeting in Takhar province Thursday warned the government of dire consequences if they were not awarded their due place and rights.      Full news...

IWPR: Helmand's farmers are chopping down their pomegranate trees for the more lucrative opium plants, while blaming the government for failing to help them. The beautiful red flowers of the pomegranate tree used to cover Helmand, a province which was famous for the luscious red fruit. But these days a different sort of flower blooms, as more and more of Helmand's sandy soil is given over to the opium poppy.      Full news...

AFP: UN rights chief Louise Arbour criticised Afghanistan Tuesday for stalling on a plan to address atrocities and human rights abuses committed in its more than two decades of armed conflict.      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...

The Ottawa Citizen: The Defence Department is keeping secret the names of dozens of companies that received almost $42 million worth of contracts in Afghanistan. However, an analysis by CanWest News Service suggests that more than $1.1 million in business has been awarded to an Afghan company that bears the same name as one of Kandahar's most infamous warlords.      Full news...