Afghan Divide - regular coverage from the ground of the war-torn country by Afghan journalists for an international audience

IPS investigative series on local Afghans who have been abandoned or poorly treated by a complex web of U.S. contractors, their insurance companies, and their military counterparts despite years of service risking life and limb to help the U.S. military in the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Mission Essential, Translators Expendable

Military Translators Risk Low Pay, Death

Pratap Chatterjee’s
report for CorpWatch

Early End to U.S. Combat Role in Afghanistan Draws Cheers, Jeers, Confusion
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta's surprise announcement Wednesday that U.S. troops will phase out their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013 is drawing mixed reactions, as well as a fair bit of confusion, from both critics and supporters of the 11-year-old war here.
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Pakistan Denies "Intimate" Taliban Links
By Correspondents*
DOHA, Qatar - Pakistan has rejected as "frivolous" a leaked NATO report which claims that the country's security services are helping the Taliban, and suggesting that the group believes it is poised to regain power.
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PAKISTAN
New Rehab Plan Brings Hope for War-Disabled
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The prolonged United States-led war against terrorism has left a large number of people disabled in Pakistan, compelling the government to institute a rehabilitation plan that will include imparting vocational skills.
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AFGHANISTAN
38 Attacks a Day Take Their Toll
By Rebecca Murray
KANDAHAR - A red flare lights up the moonless night at a remote military outpost in southern Kandahar, a signal to land for the incoming helicopter. Bordering Pakistan, this desolate strip of desert is deadly, especially during peak ‘fighting season’ every summer between NATO-ISAF military forces and the Taliban.
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U.S. Probe of Border Attack Hardened Pakistani Suspicions
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The Pakistani military leadership's response to the U.S. report on its helicopter attack on two Pakistani border posts Nov. 26 assailed the credibility of the investigation by Air Force Brig. Gen. Steven Clark and expressed doubt that the attack could have been "accidental".
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PAKISTAN
Taliban Bombs Get Deadlier
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR - In their efforts to kill and injure more people as part of a terror campaign in northern Pakistan, the Taliban militia have resorted to lacing bombs with toxic chemicals that leave survivors with complicated wounds.
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PAKISTAN
New Price Tags on Stranded NATO Supplies
By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI - From a distance, the neatly stacked red, blue and orange containers suggest that business is good at Karachi’s Kemari port.
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U.S.
A Decade in the Purgatory Called Guantanamo
By Charles Davis
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of protesters, dozens outfitted in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, took to the streets outside the White House on Wednesday to demonstrate against torture and indefinite detention on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
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AFGHANISTAN
Trains Face a Rough Political Terrain
By Rebecca Murray
HAIRATAN - Last month the first cargo train crossed the ‘Friendship Bridge’ from Uzbekistan to the border town Hairatan in northern Afghanistan, and rolled along 75 kilometres of newly laid track to Mazar-e-Sharif.
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AFGHANISTAN
Catch 'em Young, for Prostitution
By Rebecca Murray
MAZAR-E-SHARIF - Soma was a teenager in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when her grandfather arranged her marriage to a husband she had never met.
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U.S.
"Arab Spring" Dominated TV Foreign News in 2011
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - The so-called "Arab Spring" led U.S. network television evening news coverage during 2011, comprising a total of about 10 percent of all the news coverage provided by the three major commercial networks during 2011, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.
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AFGHANISTAN
Killing Heroin With Saffron
By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR - Weaning Afghanistan’s poppy farmers away from growing the raw material for the bulk of the world’s illicit heroin has never been easy, but Kashmir’s saffron cultivators may have the answer.
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AFGHANISTAN
Husband, 60, Wife, 8
By Rebecca Murray
KABUL - Activists voice concern that Afghan women’s rights continue to be marginalised, and nowhere is gender inequality more starkly illustrated than in the country’s flawed justice system.
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After working to strengthen independent media in Afghanistan for three years, IPS has teamed up with The Killid Group (TKG) and Pajhwok Afghan News (PAN) in 2007 to provide regular coverage from the ground of the war-torn country by Afghan journalists for an international audience. The partnership is a continuation of IPS's commitment to support local Afghan media, which has emerged as a platform for both debate and dissemination among the general public of diverse ideas, views and concerns about the country's past, present and future. And enhance pluralistic democracy by giving voice to Afghan citizens and civil society.