IDMC: Fierce fighting between NATO troops and insurgents in southern Afghanistan has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing from their homes in a new wave of displacement. Although numbers are unverified, the government said that more than 20,000 families had been displaced due to the fighting in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan as of November 2006.      Full news...

Institute for War and Peace Reporting: "The girl who was exchanged for a dog" has become a sensation around the world, sparking outrage in human rights circles. But the canine connection is a minor part of the story, a curiosity that served as a hook to bring the case to public attention.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: The prevailing cold wave has claimed lives of 11 children and women in the Shibar district of the central Bamyan province last week.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Rivals have accused General Abdul Rashid Dostum for causing insecurity and distributing weapons amongst his followers in Jawzjan and Faryab provinces.      Full news...

The State (South Carolina): More heroin from Afghanistan is hitting American city streets, five years after the U.S. toppled the fundamentalist Taliban regime.      Full news...

The Observer: Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy.      Full news...

AP: NATO acknowledged Wednesday that the number of civilians killed by its forces in Afghanistan last year was too high, but said the Western alliance was working to change that in 2007.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: Insecurity and intimidation by gunmen kept some 50,000 school-age children away from continuing their education during the past year in the southern province of Ghazni, officials say.      Full news...

Reuters: Scores of people protested in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday over the killing of two civilians and the arrest of three by U.S.-led troops, officials and witnesses said.      Full news...

Seven Oaks Magazine: In early September, Canadian military personnel stationed in Afghanistan's Kandahar province spearheaded NATO's Operation Medusa, aimed at Taliban strongholds in the Panjwaii and Zhari districts of that province. Accustomed to seeing the Canadian Forces' role as that of peace-keepers, many observers were stunned by reports that the Medusa offensive had resulted in hundreds of enemy combatants killed along with five fatalities suffered by Canadian soldiers. Meanwhile, there was a largely unreported civilian exodus as some 80,000 people fled their homes while "at least 50 civilians were killed over several weeks of bombing" (New York Times, Nov 27, A12).      Full news...

UPI: Iran has poured more than $200 million in aid into Afghanistan as part of a bid to broaden its political and religious influence, The New York Times reported.      Full news...

International Herald Tribune: Afghanistan, a fragile mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, has long been susceptible to intervention from more powerful neighbors. As the world's largest predominantly Shiite country, Iran is the traditional foreign backer of Afghanistan's Shiites, roughly 20 percent of the country's population. During the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, Iranian Revolutionary Guards financed and trained fundamentalist Shiite militias, as well as Sunni fighters. In the civil war after the Russian withdrawal in 1989, Iran was a patron of the Northern Alliance, while Pakistan supported the ultimately victorious Taliban.      Full news...

The Hindustan Times - While the world waiting eagerly to welcome the new year 2007, the people of Afghanistan, the Karzai government and the US and NATO fighters would like to forget their worst year since the ouster of Taliban five years ago. The year 2006 witnessed the killing of over 3900 people, representing a four-fold increase over the 1000 deaths last year.      Full news...

BBC - Five years ago, after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's new government pledged swift action to improve the lives of women. But a recent report by the international women's organisation Womankind Worldwide said millions of Afghan women and girls continue to face discrimination and violence in their day-to-day lives.      Full news...

BBC News: Gulsoom is 17-years-old and married. Last year she tried to commit suicide - she failed. She set fire to herself but, against the odds, survived with appalling injuries. Her plight reflects that of a growing number of young Afghan women, campaigners say.      Full news...

HRW - New York – President Hamid Karzai should immediately enforce a program to provide truth, reconciliation and accountability for war crimes and major human rights abuses over the past 30 years in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. The Afghan government should establish a special court to try those responsible, some of whom hold high office, as soon as possible, Human Rights Watch said.      Full news...

IWPR: Idris, 16, sells cigarettes for a living. Walking along the road in Herat with a wooden box hanging from his neck, he confesses that he had moved onto stronger substances. "I didn't want to become addicted, but I started smoking since I was selling cigarettes," he said.      Full news...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach must be killed.      Full news...

AP - KABUL - Farida's son inherited her drug addiction in the womb, and drank her opium-laced breast milk. And when he cried and fussed, she calmed him with specks of opium diluted in tea.      Full news...

KANDAHAR, 29 November (IRIN) - Some 100 women have attempted suicide by committing self-immolation or taking poison during the last eight months in the insurgency-hit southern province of Kandahar, an Afghan human rights watchdog said on Wednesday.      Full news...

A local commander and his 11 men gang-rape a 22-year-old woman in Shahre Buzurg district of the northeastern Badakhshan province on Nov.28. The crime took place in the Shah Dasht village, by a local warlord called Mujtaba who belongs to Jamiat-e-Islami Afghanistan led by Burhanuddin Rabbani (now member of the parliament).      Full news...

BBC News: More than half of Afghanistan's children are not going to school because of a shortage of places and teachers, the aid agency Oxfam says.      Full news...

The Independent: Halima spends her life in the shadows. The light shows up her face, which bears the marks of her pain and humiliation - damage inflicted by her violent husband, while his family stood and watched. The 22-year-old woman's left cheekbone was shattered during one of the many beatings she had to endure for four years.      Full news...

Blood dripped down the 16-year-old girl's face after another beating by her drug addict husband. Worn down by life's pain, she ran to the kitchen, doused herself with gas from a lamp and struck a match.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News - JAWZJAN CITY: About 400 residents of the northern Jawzjan province Thursday in a protest rally urged Juma Khan Hamdard to quit his position as governor. The locals accused Hamdard as inefficient, his links with Hezb-i-Islami, involvement in smuggling and weak management.      Full news...

Sexual abuse, murder and other crimes of different types are increasing in the Northern provinces of Afghanistan and this situation has provoked the intense concerns of human rights and women affairs' activists.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News: A commander of the National Army Unit of Shindand Airport in Herat Province injured a headmaster and student of high school and beat more than 20 teachers.      Full news...

AP - KABUL - Eight-year-old Sajjad's kite struggles upward. It's nothing grand -- a plastic bag salvaged from a heap of garbage and fashioned into a diamond shape. But it's a symbol of change in Kabul, five years after the Afghan capital was freed from a Taliban regime that believed activities such as kite-flying would distract youngsters from studying the Islamic holy book, the Quran.      Full news...

BBC (Persian Services): According to a report from the Northern Province of Takhar, tens of people staged a demonstration to protest rape of a girl by police in the Dasht-e-Qala district of this province. Also it is reported that selling of women has become very common in Faryab province in north of Afghanistan and each woman is sold up to 50,000 Afghanis (around US$1,000).      Full news...

RAWA - Sanobar, 11-years-old daughter of Gulsha, an Afghan widow, has been abducted, raped and then traded in exchange for a dog by warlords in Aliabad district of Kondoz province in North of Afghanistan.      Full news...