Afghan Aid 'Ineffective or Inefficient'; Military Spending Dwarfs Development Aid
19 November 2007
Jon Hemming, 'Too much aid to Afghanistan wasted, Oxfam says', Reuters AlertNet, 20 November 2007
EXCERPT: "Too much aid to Afghanistan is wasted -- soaked up in contractors' profits, spent on expensive expatriate consultants or squandered on small-scale, quick-fix projects, a leading British charity said on Tuesday. Despite more than $15 billion of aid pumped into Afghanistan since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001,...
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Australia May Redeploy Troops to Afghanistan: Opposition
19 November 2007
'Australia May Redeploy Troops to Afghanistan', Daily Times, 17 November 2007
"Australia would withdraw about half of its 1,000 troops from Iraq and consider sending them to Afghanistan if the government changes at elections next week, an opposition lawmaker said Friday. Joel Fitzgibbon, the opposition Labor Party's defence spokesman, said 550 combat troops currently in Iraq were a ?misallocation of resources,? and could be...
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Taliban Making Gains in Kandahar: Senlis Council
19 November 2007
Mitch Potter, '', Toronto Star, 18 November 2007.
EXCERPT: "A majority of Afghans in the embattled southern province believe that Canada's footprint is shrinking as Taliban insurgents "make the rules" of travel through greater swaths of territory, according to a survey conducted by the Senlis Council, one of the few Western research organizations still traveling Kandahar's risk-prone roads.The...
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Afghanistan Fifth Last on UN Human Development Index
19 November 2007
'Fifth least developed country in the world, IRIN, 18 November 2007
"Afghanistan has dropped a place in a UN global human development index, which ranks countries based on their citizens? economic income, life expectancy and literacy rate, according to the country's National Human Development Report (NHDR) for 2007. Afghanistan was ranked 174th out of 178 countries - ahead of only Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger. [...]...
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U.S. Hopes to Use Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda: New York Times
19 November 2007
Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Carlotta Gall, '', New York Times, 19 November 2007.
EXCERPT: "A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military...
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New Zealand Extends Afghan Troop Deployment
19 November 2007
'New Zealand Extends Afghan Troop Deployment', Reuters AlertNet, 19 November 2007
New Zealand has extended the duration of its troop deployment in Afghanistan for two years until September 2009, Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday. The tour of duty for the 120-member provincial reconstruction team in Bamiyan province, west of Kabul, had been due to end in September this year [...] Clark said New Zealand would also send a warship...
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