Spiegel, 28 December 2014 Combat operations in Afghanistan may be coming to an end, but a look at secret NATO documents reveals that the US and the UK were far less scrupulous in choosing targets for killing than previously believed. Drug dealers were also on the lists, called JPEL. […] The documents suggest that sometimes […]
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Business Week, 18 December 2014 “The Americans started Matie [from Nawa district] on his road to prosperity”, writes Mujib Mashal, one of Afghanistan’s most outstanding journalists. Matie was part of a pattern. “As hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money poured into the country, it created a new class of wealthy, entrepreneurial Afghans. […]
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Pajhwok News Agency, 17 December 2014 Acting Counternarcotics Minister Haroon Rashid Sherzad informed that the bulk (54%) of poppy crop was cultivated in 10 districts of four provinces this season: Nad Ali, Nawzad, Nahr-i-Saraj, Kajaki, Garmser, Musa Qala and Khaneshin districts of Helmand province, Bakwa district of Farah, Maiwand district of Kandahar and Khashrod of Nimroz. This year, […]
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SIGAR, 10 December 2014 Today SIGAR released a high-risk list for the Afghanistan reconstruction effort that calls attention to areas that are especially vulnerable to significant waste, fraud, and abuse. The seven items on the list are areas in which SIGAR believes U.S. implementing agencies are failing to mitigate risks in their operations. The high-risk […]
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al-Jazeera, 4 Deember 2014 Helena Malikyar about flawed aid programmes, rosy reporting and “feel-good figures” of success.
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UNOCHA,/Relief Web, 23 November 2014 UNOCHA lists Afghanistan’s key humanitarian issues: Conflict causes death, injury and displacement 7,965 civilians killed and injured by conflict January-September 2014, 22 per cent of which were children. 105,800 people fled their homes, in the same period, amidst increased fighting in Northern Hilmand and other provinces. 1.2 million children acutely […]
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New York Times, 22 November 2014 In this striking reportage about the situation in the district of Kapisa province, author Azam Ahmed writes that “it is the government that operates in the shadows, following the dictates of the Taliban in order to stay alive. Afghan soldiers in Tagab district will not leave their base except […]
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Global Post, 16 November 2014 It all started with a short article on a popular Afghan news website. Khaama Press reported that two members of the Taliban had been caught in a rather compromising position in the northern province of Badakhshan.
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New York Times, 15 November 2014 A report about Pakistani refugees in Afghanistan who have fled the anti-Taleban offensive, from Gulan Camp, “a stretch of rough stones and reed bushes in the Gorbuz district of Khost, just a few miles from the border” where about 3000 families live, according to UNHCR, 65 percent of them children. “Most families […]
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New York Times, 11 November 2014 Excellent piece by Declan Walsh about what he calls a “vast ecosystem of bribery” in Afghans customs, taking the Torkham border crossing as an example where every day up to 500 trucks pass and pay bribes of around USD 1400, “slash(inG) the customs bill, often by up to 70 […]
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IRIN, 11 November 2014 “Malnutrition is the main reason for deaths of children under five in this province,” Homayoun Zaheer, head of the Jalalabad hospital, said, pointing to the children. A government-backed report highlighted the extent of malnutrition in the country, yet experts say efforts to tackle the problem are hampered by cultural norms, shrinking health […]
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Vice, 4 November 2014 “The hospital is run by Emergency, one of the best NGOs I have ever encountered. It was a normal facility before foreign troops were deployed here, but it has since become a trauma unit, treating nothing but severe war injuries. The hospital and its staff are operating at full capacity. Every […]
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