BBC – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the US of playing a “double game” in Afghanistan after the US used the same term to condemn Iran’s role. Mr Ahmadinejad said the US had “created terrorists and now say they are fighting them”, as he appeared with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. Read article
Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign. British journalists and TV crews are to be banned from the Afghan front line once a date for the election has been set, while senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters. MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph. Read article
Times Online – Bloody clashes between competing factions of Afghanistan’s insurgency left up to 79 people dead, officials said today, including 19 civilians in a lawless part of the country beyond the reach of government or Nato forces. Fighting in a remote stretch of Baghlan province, in northern Afghanistan, broke out on Saturday, local police said, and continued through the weekend — although it was not clear what triggered the violence. Read Article
Sunday Mirror – Children in Afghanistan are more likely to die before the age of five than children anywhere else in the world, according to Save the Children. At the current appalling rate, one child dies every two minutes in the violence-wracked nation. The study shows that last year was also the deadliest for Afghan children since the fall of the Taliban. More than 1,050 were killed in suicide attacks, air strikes, explosions and crossfire, according to latest figures. Read article
International Business Times – War-torn Afghanistan will set up an Internet filter to block Internet sites with sexual or violent content, a minister said. But the government denied that it was another attempt at censorship or would include the Taliban’s website. Read Article
Reuters – The Pentagon should consider blocking a potential $1 billion contract with the company formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police because of questions about its conduct in Afghanistan, a top U.S. senator said. In letters to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said there was evidence of misconduct in a previous subcontract awarded to a Blackwater affiliate to conduct weapons training for the Afghan National Army. Read article
Ahlul Bayt – According to Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA), the captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, was scheduled to meet US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke at the Manas Air Base for talks on waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a journalist says. Rigi had planned to meet a high-profile US official at the Manas Air Base near Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek. Read article
BBC – Britain will be “militarily engaged” in Afghanistan for a further five years, the head of the Army has said. General Sir David Richards told the Daily Telegraph, while on a visit to Helmand, that he expected the military conflict to “trail off in 2011″. But British troops will continue in training and support roles, he said. Read article
Washington Post – A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan — often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport — as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money’s origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal. Read article
BBC – United Nations aid agencies are warning of a sharp increase in unaccompanied Afghan children applying for asylum across Europe. The latest figures from the UN refugee agency show an increase of 60% last year, with more than 6,000 under-18s seeking asylum. Unicef says there is an urgent need to protect children migrating alone. Read article
Dailiy Telegraph – Somali insurgents on Sunday barred the World Food Programme from the famine and war-plagued Horn of Africa country, where the UN says four million people – half the population – needs emergency food aid. The Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab movement, which controls most of central and southern Somalia, said food distributed by the UN agency had undermined local farmers and accused it of acting with a political agenda. Read Article
Politico – Former officials familiar with the deal say that Blackwater is likely to get a Defense Department-issued contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to train and mentor Afghan police. The police training contract is supposed to be decided next month, and the company has not been officially notified that it’s getting it. But the only competing bid for the contract, submitted by Northrop with MPRI, has been disqualified, a former official knowledgeable about the contract said. Read article
BBC – The head of Russia’s federal drug control agency has accused Nato of not doing enough to curb the production of heroin in Afghanistan. Victor Ivanov said at least 30,000 people died in Russia every year from heroin, 90% of it from Afghanistan. Read article
CNSNews – More than 300 U.S. soldiers have died in the war in Afghanistan since May 15, 2009, the day when the first major wave of new troops ordered by President Barack Obama arrived in the country. The 308 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan since then account for about a third of the total of 920 U.S. casualties in the eight-year war. Read article
New York Times – At least 17 people were killed and 32 wounded early Friday when several suicide bombers attacked a hotel popular with foreigners and the surrounding area in the center of Kabul, police officials said. News reports said the Taliban took responsibility for the attack, which came despite a major offensive by American-led coalition forces against militants in the southern province of Helmand, a central element in President Obama’s strategy in rural Afghanistan. Read article
Washington Independent – Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military. Read article
Times Online – A night-time raid in eastern Afghanistan in which eight schoolboys from one family were killed was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence and should never have been authorised, a Times investigation has found. Ten children and teenagers died when troops stormed a remote mountain compound near the border with Pakistan in December. Read article
ABC – A remote-controlled bomb has killed at least seven civilians and wounded 14 in front of a government building in southern Afghanistan. The blast occurred in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province. NATO-led troops are in the 10th day of an operation to flush the Taliban out of nearby Marjah district, where the militants had set up their last big stronghold in Helmand. Read article
BBC – Western diplomats have expressed deep concern at a decree from Afghan President Hamid Karzai granting him total control over a key election body. The move gives him the power to appoint all five members of Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). Read article
Ed – as the US enforces “democracy” upon another developing country at gunpoint it serves, once again, only to create a new dictatorship. Will they never learn that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?
Reuters – The number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan has reached 1,000, an independent website said on Tuesday, a grim reminder that eight years of fighting has failed to defeat Taliban insurgents. Icasualties.org said 54 U.S. troops were killed this year in Afghanistan, raising the casualties to 1,000, compared to eight in Iraq, where the total has reached 4,378. The rise to 1,000 dead coincides with one of the biggest offensives against the Taliban, a NATO-led assault in the Marjah district of Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province. Read article
ABC – NATO has confirmed civilians were mistakenly killed in an air strike in southern Afghanistan at the weekend. The Afghan government now claims 27 people died, not 33 as earlier reported. The incident happened when a convoy of three vehicles was bombed in Uruzgan province. Read article
Associated Press – As of Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, at least 911 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count. The AP count is four more than the Defense Department’s tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT. Read article
Associated Press – The fallout of war has a price in southern Afghanistan. U.S. Army units fighting the Taliban in Helmand province have a compensation system for any death, injury or damage to crops and buildings caused by American forces to Afghan civilians and their property. The suffering of a population caught between combatants during the Afghan war is a politically sensitive issue, and NATO troops have sought to make amends for deadly airstrikes and other instances in which civilians were killed. Read article
Reuters – Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s coalition government collapsed on Saturday when the two largest parties failed to agree on whether to withdraw troops from Afghanistan this year as planned. The fall of the government in the EU member country, just two days short of the coalition’s third anniversary, all but guarantees that the 2,000 Dutch troops will be brought home this year and will eventually prompt new parliamentary elections. Read article
BBC – A Nato air strike has killed seven policemen in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province, Afghan officials say. The officers were mistakenly hit after a joint Nato-Afghan patrol was ambushed by Taliban insurgents, the officials told news agencies. Read article
Ed – at this rate it seems safer to be an insurgent than a friendly Afghan or civilian
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