The campaign officially opened for Afghanistan's first post-Taliban parliamentary race Aug. 17, even as violence continues to plague the country. Authorities are still not ruling out the possibility of an attack against a helicopter that crashed near Herat Aug. 17, killing 17 Spanish soldiers on board, although bad weather could have been the cause. (RFE/RL, Aug. 17) But Taliban rebels were almost certainly behind the bombing of a bus carrying police trainees that day in Kandahar, killing one and injuring at least 11. Eyewitnesses said the bomb was in a cart placed near a speed bump on a road in the city centre and was detonated as the bus passed by. (BBC, Aug. 17)

An Aug. 16 AFP account, online at TruthOut, reports the claims of former Iraqi prisoners claim on that evening's BBC Newsnight that British troops abused and humiliated them in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in March 2003. Two brothers, Marhab and As'ad Zaaj-al-Saghir, said they were beaten with sticks and denied water and sleep after being arrested in Basra and taken to an internment camp. One said a soldier urinated on his head. Newsnight said the accounts were similar to numerous other claims made in a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Violent clashes between Kurds and police erupted in the north Syrian town of Ein al-Arab Aug. 16, according to the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in Syria (AOHRS). The organization said the violence flared after police halted a march in support of a banned separatist group, Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Cars were burned, and stones hurled at police who responded by firing tear gas and making a number of arrests.

In the last intallment of a series on the looming disaster in Nepal, Newsday's courageous reporter Matthew McAllester Aug. 17 highlights a little-noted ethnic dimesion to the conflict, which is usually portrayed soley in terms of fanatical Maoist guerillas versus an autocratic monarchy. The story, entitled "Local militias add to Nepal's deadly mix," notes the emergence of paramilitary vigilante groups to fight the guerillas, backed by the army and big land-owners. The Royal Nepalese Army has denied creating the "village counterforces," as the militias call themselves. But militia leaders boasted to McAllester of receiving training and official ID badges from the army, prompting Brig. Gen. Dipak Gurung to admit the army's involvement--and the risk it entails. "Once you train them, you have to take responsibility for them... I hope it doesn't come to a situation where we have to disarm them. You never know."

The Gaza disengagement is being completed, without the armed resistance from settlers that had been feared. Reports AP: "Israeli troops dragged sobbing Jewish settlers out of homes, synagogues and even a nursery school Wednesday and hauled them onto buses in a massive evacuation, fulfilling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's promise to withdraw from the Gaza Strip after a 38-year occupation." In one apparent effort to derail the disengagement by sparking a general conflagration, a Jewish settler shot dead three Palestinians in the West Bank. The assailant was reportedly a driver who had taken Palestinian workers to jobs in the Jewish settlement of Shiloh. Once there, he snatched a security guard's gun and turned it on his passengers. He was arrested, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the attack a "Jewish terror act." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas branded it "a terrorist incident." Both leaders agreed it was intended to disrupt the pullout from Gaza, home to 1.4 million Palestinians. (AP, Reuters, Aug. 17)

The Abu Dubai-based Information & Technology Publishing's online magazine offers an Aug. 14 story by Rhys Jones, "Wronging Iraq’s rights," that paints a dire picture of the kind of oppressive theocracy that could be enshrined by the new constitution. The Aug. 15 deadline for the new charter has now been extended. But unless sweeping changes are made, "it seems increasingly likely to mean a huge erosion of human rights for Iraq’s 13 million women."

The Committee to Defend Women's Rights in the Middle East offers this commentary from Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI):

Yanar Mohammed: Condemn a constitution of de-humanizing women
An era of post-occupation atrocities unfolded to disclose the final chapter of human rights abuse in Iraq: A constitution of legalizing women's discrimination.

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother of a young man killed in Iraq, has now been camped out for ten days in a ditch down the road from George Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, demanding the president meet with her to explain why her son Casey had to die. She pledges she will not leave until she gets a face-to-face meeting, and will follow him back to Washington when his vacation ends if need be. Her encampment has swelled into a tent city as supporters from around the nation have converged on Crawford. On Friday Aug. 12, Bush passed right by in his motorcade on the way to a GOP fundraiser. The NY Daily News reported that Sheehan's sign read: "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?" Bush's black Chevrolet SUV has tinted windows, so it was not clear if he looked at her, or the growing ranks of demonstrators, or the hundreds of plain white crosses, painted with the names of the dead, they have planted.