When an American soldier killed 16 civilians in Kandahar in March, condemnation was swift and it came from all sides of the war.

The US Government was quick to apologize, with US President Barack Obama stating, "The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered." NATO immediately announced it was investigating the incident.

President Karzai, whose regime is financed in great part by US resources, slammed the US, saying to reporters a few days after the incident: "This has been going on for too long. You have heard me before. It is by all means the end of the rope here." Karzai, surrounded by media, paid visits to the victims' families and wore black for two days. He publicly participated in conspiracy theorizing that the soldier didn't really act alone, and the killings may have been planned and intentional, conspiracies that have otherwise been propagated by the likes of the Russian Government-owned RT.com and RAWA.org, and which helped add fuel to the flames in an already highly volatile situation.

The Taliban, for their part, immediately used the occasion to spurn out anti-American propaganda. They called US forces...More >>

Rachel Reid, of the Open Society Foundations, points out in Foreign Policy today that the evidence is simply not there that the Taliban are any more moderate than they were in 2001:

As the latest U.N. report on civilian protection shows, insurgents killed more than two thousand Afghan civilians in 2011. There has been a marked shift in their language on civilian protection - for instance the edict in the 2006 code of conduct to attack government schools is gone, the 2010 version of the Layha makes numerous injunctions to avoid harm to the ‘common people,' and outlines disciplinary measures for commanders who cause civilian harm. And yet the number of civilians killed has grown for the fifth year in a row, with the Taliban and other insurgent groups now responsible for almost 80% of the deaths. Targets last year included markets, offices, and protected sites such as mosques and hospitals.

As keen as many are for an exit from Afghanistan, perpetuating the myth of a Taliban that are any less psychopathic, deathcult and deranged than the ragtag band of illiterate mullahs hatched from ISI-sponsored madrassahs who hung children for "spying", bulldozed rock walls over men branded...More >>

I keep a folder on my computer of attacks against girls' education in Afghanistan. It's full of stories of gas poisonings of girls' schools, murdered teachers, beheaded principles, arson of school buildings, acid attacks, and threats and 'night letters' warning communities to not send their daughters to school. It's a bulging folder.

Yesterday I added a new article, a story of less than 500 words in The Guardian reporting the murder of Khan Mohammad, a local man who headed the Porak Girls' School in Logar province. There are sparse details about Khan's life or the exact circumstances of his death, other than to mention that he was shot near his home and his son was injured in the attack. The rest of the article gives very basic background on the Taliban and discusses the findings of an unnamed February report on girls' education in Afghanistan (it's this report), as if to bulk up the story for lack of more to say.

It's tempting to file it away without further thought, just one more tragic story out of Afghanistan, for which there is never any shortage.

But Khan Mohammad's story was a triumph before it...More >>

Mariam Sadat is one proud woman. She’s proud to be Afghan, proud of her country’s progress in the last decade, and proud of the famously good fruits and nuts that grow from Afghan soil.

That’s why she called her rapidly expanding company, the Afghan Pride Association. While it’s a profit-making enterprise, it’s also a network of 350 women across three provinces in Afghanistan. The women are farmers and they are using state-of-the-art solar technology that Mariam has acquired for them to process high quality dried fruits and nuts native to Afghanistan, like pistachios, almonds, raisins and walnuts. Mariam sells the packaged products to shops and hotels, and she regularly does the exhibitions circuits in Kabul.

Over lunch in a Kabul restaurant in February, her two daughters in tow, she tells me about how she got the idea for this line of business when she was employed with the Afghan Women’s Business Council as a trainer. Travelling around the country to train women farmers for the Council, she witnessed how women in agriculture toiled long hours but then...More >>