A NATO military report says some members of a U.S.-trained police force in Afghanistan have committed human rights abuses, but that overall the force has been effective.

The NATO report follows a Human Rights Watch (HRW) study released in September, documenting abuses, including killings, sexual assault, and illegal detention, committed by the Afghan Local Police, or ALP.

The NATO investigation looked at 46 accusations from the HRW report and found seven were credible, 15 were partially credible, while 10 were not credible.

The NATO study conceded the ALP needs better training in basic human rights.

Both NATO and the HRW also raised concerns about the role of government-backed militia groups, known as arbakai, controlled by local strongmen.

Afghanistan’s security forces have grown to over 300,000 and receive billions of dollars of funding from the United States.

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The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.

As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953′s CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the “crime” of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have “saved” Iran from a nonexistent “Red Menace,” but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial “safe hands”–those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Similarly today, a nonexistent “nuclear threat” is the pretext being used by Washington to install a “friendly” regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby “securing” the country’s vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals.

As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon “has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch ‘offensive cyber operations’ in response to hostile acts,” according to The Washington Post.

Citing “a long-overdue report to Congress released late Monday,” we’re informed that “hostile acts may include ‘significant cyber attacks directed against the U.S. economy, government or military’,” unnamed Defense Department officials stated. Read the rest of this entry »

KABUL (Reuters) – An Afghan woman, jailed two years ago for adultery after she was raped by her cousin’s husband, is seeking a presidential pardon that her lawyer hopes could set a legal precedent for other women in a similar position.

Gulnaz, now 21, became pregnant following the attack in 2009 and her baby daughter was born behind bars. When her pregnancy brought the crime to light, she was, like her attacker, convicted and jailed for the crime of adultery by force.

She was initially sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, but on appeal, this was increased to 12 years. A further appeal last week saw that cut back again to three years.

Gulnaz’s attacker received a 12-year prison term, later reduced on appeal to seven years.

Her case has drawn attention to the challenges still faced by Afghan women, 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime that banned women from almost all work and education.

With foreign combat troops set to return home by the end of 2014, some activists inside and outside Afghanistan fear that women’s rights may be sacrificed in the scramble to ensure the West leaves behind a relatively stable state.

Human rights campaigners have condemned her conviction, and the court’s decision that she could go free if she married her attacker, which she later agreed to. He is still married to her cousin, but under Afghan law can take a second wife.
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