Free Republic

• Outrage over Karzai endorsement of edict on womens rights • President endorsed and promoted Ulema Council edict • Significant, recent, advances for women at extreme riskHuman rights groups are up in arms about Afghan President Karzai's very public support this week for a crackdown on womens' rights in his country. The move by the Afghanistan government, which curiously coincided with International Women's Day, has dismayed many who have applauded the advancement of women in Afghanistan in the years since the U.S.-led invasion of 2001 which toppled the Taliban. The head of the Save the Children Fund Jasmine Whitbread...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Gunbattles and airstrikes by NATO and Afghan troops killed 53 militants in Afghanistan, including a wanted Taliban commander who tried to hide from soldiers under a woman's burqa, officials said Saturday. The U.S. forces targeting the commander surrounded a house Friday in Ghazni province and ordered everyone inside to leave, a military statement said. Six women and 12 children left the building, but while soldiers were questioning the women they discovered one was actually a man dressed in a burqa, the traditional all-encompassing dress that most Afghan women wear. The man, later identified as the targeted...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- More than 30 Taliban fighters and four policemen were killed in a series of clashes, airstrikes and bombings in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday. Taliban fighters attacked a police checkpoint in the Nad Ali district of southern Helmand province Tuesday, sparking a clash that killed 18 militants, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said. The militants attacked the officers guarding a government compound in the district before being repelled by the police, Andiwal said. There were no casualties among Afghan troops, he said. The militants have attacked the same checkpoint many times in the past, and the...

San Rafael, Calif. (AP) -- Marin County residents have the highest median income in the state, nearly three times that of residents living in rural Imperial County, who have the lowest, according to recent figures released by the state Franchise Tax Board. Residents filing jointly from Marin earned a median income of $94,410, according to a compilation of 2003 tax returns. The county's median income on all returns was $44,797, also the highest in the state. In all of California, the median jointly filed income was $58,653. Marin residents' income is reflected in the price of housing in the area,...

Two senior members of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime surrendered to the government on Thursday under an amnesty offer, a provincial governor said. The officials -- Mullah Mohammad Naseem, the former Taliban governor of Zabul province, and Haji Mohammad Akhtar, former police chief of Farah province -- surrendered following month-long talks, the governor of Helmand province said. "They've joined the government's national reconciliation program," the governor, Mullah Sher Mohammad, told Reuters. The Taliban have been waging an insurgency since being overthrown by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 for refusing to hand over al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, the architect of...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The United States could cut its forces in Afghanistan next summer if Taliban militants accept an amnesty to be drawn up by President Hamid Karzai and neighboring Pakistan, the senior U.S. commander here said Sunday. Any reduction in the 18,000-strong mainly American combat force in Afghanistan would relieve the U.S. military, stretched thin by the much larger deployment in Iraq. Still, the force is unlikely to shrink before parliamentary elections slated for April. "By next summer we'll have a much better sense if the security threat is diminished as a result of, say, a significant reconciliation...