Mission & Justice

27/6/08

A suicide car bomb has killed five Afghan civilians and injured 19 others, Afghan sources say, amid continued fighting between multinational troops and Taliban fighters. The explosion took place on Monday near a convoy of international forces in western Afghanistan, Zemarai Bashary, an interior ministry spokesman, said. “A suicide car bomb exploded. Four civilians were killed and 12 others were injured. The target was a foreign forces’ convoy,” he said. The condition of the foreign soldiers after the blast, which took place in the Shindand district of Herat province, was not immediately known. The explosion occurred on the same day that US-led forces said they killed 55 Taliban fighters, including three senior commanders.

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22/6/08

Foreign military efforts to win “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan are misplaced and failing, according to research that calls into question tactics used by Australian troops. Afghans “are not fooled” by reconstruction and aid programs designed to improve stability and their material conditions, the research says. Instead, the study by international aid agencies says Afghans see the tactics as attempts to prop up the “discredited” Government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The research gives a rare insight into Afghan views of reconstruction projects done by foreign troops. It focuses on two provinces, including Oruzgan where most of the 1000 Australian troops in Afghanistan are based.

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Stephen Graham; 14/6/08

The top elected official in north-west Pakistan said the country should rethink its relationship with America after a US air strike reportedly killed 11 Pakistani troops. The US and Pakistan remained at odds yesterday in their versions of Tuesday night’s skirmish on the Afghan border. US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said it was still not exactly clear what happened and so far US officials “have not been able to corroborate” that Pakistani troops died. The US “would be very saddened” if that were true, Mr Hadley told reporters travelling with US President George Bush in Europe. The US-led coalition in Afghanistan yesterday released video of a bombardment aimed at militants to support its account. The excerpts, however, do not show the Gorparai border post where Pakistan said its troops died, and one explosion occurs off-screen, without explanation.

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Aunohita Mojumdar; 12/6/08

As the Afghan government and the international donor community meet in Paris on June 12 to decide the future nature of assistance to the war-ravaged nation, NGOs and rights groups are urging that the needs of ordinary citizens come first. Some $15 billion has been spent on reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan since the US-led coalition deposed the Taliban and set up a democratic-influenced government in 2000. But international aid groups believe donor priorities continue to overlook the needs of the people.Oxfam, the international development agency which has maintained a long-term commitment and experience in Afghanistan, is critical of both the quantity and quality of aid that has been disbursed in the country.

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11/6/08

The US was acting in “self defence” when it launched an air raid that Pakistan says killed 11 of its troops, according to the Pentagon. US officials in Afghanistan have released a video they say shows they were attacking “anti-Afghan forces” on the border with Pakistan in the raid which Islamabad has condemned as an “unprovoked and cowardly” attack on its own troops. The Pakistani soldiers were killed on Tuesday at a border post in Gora Prai, in the volatile Mohmand province, a tribal region in Pakistan opposite Afghanistan’s Kunar province. Geoff Morrell, the US department of defence spokesperson, said at a news conference on Wednesday: “Every indication we have is that this was a legitimate strike against forces that had attacked members of the coalition.”

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Aunohita Mojumdar; 3/6/08

On a dusty road in a middle class neighbourhood in west Kabul, an unassuming house looks almost as nondescript as any other except for the simple board declaring it is the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Afghanistan. It is here that a quiet revolution is taking place. For the first time in the country’s recent history, a group of young women are learning to express their experiences, sorrows and joys growing up in war-ravaged Afghanistan through art And they are producing remarkably sophisticated and eloquent work. The originality of their imagination is even more extraordinary in the context of Afghanistan’s tragic history of conflict and the violence which continues to be visited upon women living in this country.

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2/6/08

Al Jazeera has discovered that thousands of children, some as young as aged four, are being forced to work in brick factories in Afghanistan. In the Sokhrod district in the east of the country, which is well known for producing bricks, there are about 38 factories and about 2,200 children are believed to be working in them. “I don’t want to do this with my life. I want to go to school, but I cannot because I am poor,” 10-year-old Shafiq Ola told Al Jazeera. “My family is in debt for $800 and I have to work.” Many of the children were forced into the brick factories after their parents became indebted to the owners. “They are bonded labour, I am holding them,” Mohamed Gul, the owner of one factory in the area near Jalalabad, said.

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Tan Ee Lyn, 1/6/08

Tradition, customs and war have combined to make mortalities among pregnant women and their newborn one of the enduring tragedies of Afghanistan. A woman lies screaming in agony and hemorrhages to death in a spartan hut in a remote region of Afghanistan. There is no doctor or midwife to help and the hospital is several days’ journey away. Women die this way every day in Afghanistan, a country with one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates. Out of every 100,000 live births, about 1600 Afghan women die in childbirth. That’s one mother dying every 27 minutes. In some of the most remote areas the death rate is as high as 6500. In comparison, the average rate in developing countries is 450. In developed countries it is nine.

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30/5/08

Taliban fighters have captured a remote district in central Afghanistan, taking prisoner the police and administration chiefs, officials and the Taliban have said. The fighters attacked the district of Rashidan in the central province of Ghazni in a night attack, the provincial governor and a Taliban spokesman told the AFP news agency on Friday. “Last night, Taliban attacked Rashidan district and it fell,” Jan Mohammad Mujahed, a provincial police chief, said. Mujahed said the plight of the seized officials was unknown.

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23/5/08

After almost three years of a hunger strike and force-feeding at Guantanamo, a Saudi detainee said he will persist with his protest until he sets foot in his native land. Legal papers obtained last week give the first detailed look at Ahmad Zaid Salem Zuhair since he was captured in Pakistan and taken to Guantanamo in 2002. The US military calls him an enemy combatant, an allegation he denies.

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