Pajhwok Afghan News: A senior police officer Tuesday alleged foreign security firms were involved in kidnappings, robberies and dacoities in Kabul. In his testimony before a parliamentary commission, crime investigations chief Gen. Alishah Paktiawal said both foreign and local employees of the security agencies were involved in such crimes.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: A global organisation working for safeguarding journalist rights has denounced the beating of on an Afghan television reporter covering the recent South Korean hostage crisis in the restive Ghazni province.      Full news...

UNHCR: A lack of jobs, safe drinking water, accessible health care, education and housing are the main obstacles to the return and reintegration of Afghan refugees, according to a recent report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).      Full news...

BBC Persian: Officials in charge of the Heart city central hospital say that since the beginning of this year (Afghan year), 26 cases of self immolation have been registered in the hospital.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Sunday voiced concern over the predicament of women prisoners in Afghanistan. Dr. Shukria Nuri, head of the UNODC, told a day-long conference on the issue that women were held in Afghan jails in inappropriate conditions that were contrary to the concept of human rights and other international norms.      Full news...

Reuters: South Korea paid Afghanistan's Taliban more than $20 million to release 19 missionaries they were holding hostage, a senior insurgent leader said on Saturday, vowing to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks.      Full news...

The Afghan Victim Memorial Project: During the night of August 25/26, 2007, in a village located ~25 kms south of Musa Qala town, Helmand Province, at least two homes were bombed by US/NATO aircraft after an earlier firefight.      Full news...

The Guardian: Fighting sleaze is no easy task in a country like Afghanistan, as anti-corruption tsar Izzatullah Wasifi can testify. The economy is awash with opium money, and bribery and backhanders are rife, as confirmed by yesterday's alarming UN report.      Full news...

The Globe and Mail: The Afghan government and its international backers must do much more to curb the "disastrous" record drug crop, which is like a cancer threatening the survival of the country, the United Nations' drugs control chief said.      Full news...

IRIN News: Thirty one-year-old Benazir - not her real name - was 12 when she was wedded to a 24-year-old man in Shinwaar District of Nangarhar Province, eastern Afghanistan. Benazir has been sold four times by men whom she considers her husbands - in a formally proscribed tradition known as women selling. She told IRIN of her extraordinary experiences.      Full news...

The Guardian: The family of a 7-year-old Afghan girl raped by two men has come forward to demand justice, defying social customs that view such attacks as a stain on the victim's honor. Two months after the rape, the girl is still in pain, rarely speaks and looks no one in the eye.      Full news...

The Guardian: Enthusiasts for the catastrophe that is the Iraq war may be hard to come by these days, but Afghanistan is another matter. The invasion and occupation that opened George Bush's war on terror are still championed by powerful voices in the occupying states as - in the words of the New York Times this week - "the good war" that can still be won. While speculation intensifies about British withdrawal from Basra, there's no such talk about a retreat from Kabul or Kandahar. On the contrary, the plan is to increase British troop numbers from the current 7,000, and ministers, commanders and officials have been hammering home the message all summer that Britain is in Afghanistan, as the foreign secretary, David Miliband, insisted, for the long haul.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: In last four years, more than one hundred thousand drug smugglers were identified in the country but only four of them were booked and arrested as drug producers and traffickers.      Full news...

EurasiaNet: Two men from one family were dragged from their home in Paktia Province on August 19 and beheaded, Pajhwak Afghan News reported. The attack occurred around midnight in the village of Abdal in Zurmat district, according to Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman for the provincial governor.      Full news...

IRIN News: Jamila - not her real name - was 14 when she was married to Habibullah, 31, a match arranged by her father. Habibullah left her just three months into their marriage to go and work in Iran and has not reappeared in 10 years. Jamila now lives with her in-laws but feels cheated as she cannot get remarried and has not sought a divorce because of the social stigma attached to such a move. She feels trapped: "I have no future," she said.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Because of difference forms of violence against women and girls, the number of women escaping home has gone up in Parwan province. Sayed Qasim Hashimi, director of Women Affairs Human Rights Branch in Parwan, told Pajhwok that last year only 10 incidents of escape of girls from their homes were registered but from the beginning of this year in almost 6 months, 29 cases had been registers with us.      Full news...

UN News Center: A United Nations envoy warned today that the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan could rise significantly if the conflict there continues at the current rate, adding to the multitude of Afghans that have already fled their homes.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: A number of people in Takhar refer to their province as ‘kingdom of bandits' and blame some of the local commanders of intervening in the government affairs, usurpation of peoples' land and properties, violence against women and unlawful conducts. But the commanders say such claims are baseless.      Full news...

IWPR: At least on the surface, media is one of the more successful areas of development in Afghanistan. According to figures from the Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs, more than 500 print publications have opened since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, as well as 70 radio and 18 television stations, both government-owned and private.      Full news...

The Guardian: The strain on US forces of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was exposed yesterday when the Pentagon published a report showing that the number of suicides among US troops is at its highest level since the 1991 Gulf war.      Full news...

The Times of India: Close on the heels of a US intelligence report of a resurgence of Taliban in Pakistan's border areas, newly declassified documents reveal that Islamabad was directly involved in funding, arming and advising the militant group.      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...

Reuters: For more than eight centuries the "Towers of Victory" -- monuments to Afghanistan's greatest empire -- have survived wars and invasions, but now weather and neglect could cause them to come crashing down.      Full news...

OhmyNews: Decades of civil and social upheaval has intensified traditional social pressures on Afghan women who were already suffering at the hands of poverty and decadent social traditions. All this was coupled by the economic dislocation of a large section of Afghanistan society. In such a situation, Afghan women found an easy escape in suicides. The trend of suicide, which started in the early years of this decade, is now practiced by desperate Afghan women throughout most parts of Afghanistan.      Full news...

The Ledger: A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.      Full news...

The Daily Telegraph: The commander of British forces in Helmand Province has predicted that the British army deployment to Afghanistan will last at least as long as the 38 years that it took British forces to pull out of Northern Ireland.      Full news...

The Herald Tribune: On the eve of his Camp David meeting with President George W. Bush, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan painted a bleak picture of life in his country, saying that the security situation had worsened and that the United States and its allies were no closer to catching Osama bin Laden than they were a few years ago.      Full news...

The Afghan Victim Memorial: At 4:00PM on Thursday, August 2, 2007 in the Taliban-controlled village of Qaleh (Qal’eh) Chah in the district of Baghran in Helmand Province, US/NATO forces bombed the village as part of an alleged decapitation strike (targeting “two Taliban commanders”). A group of people had gathered near the popular shrine of Ibrahim Shah Baba (though the reason for the gathering remains unclear).      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: In the last one-month, cases of self-immolation have considerably increased in Balkh province and four women have committed self-immolation.      Full news...

AFP: More than 100 people, many of them widows, called for international help in identifying remains found in the latest mass grave to be uncovered in Afghanistan.      Full news...