KABUL (Reuters) – With most foreign combat troops set to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, Iran is using the media in the war-ravaged nation to gain influence, a worrying issue for Washington.

Nearly a third of Afghanistan’s media is backed by Iran, either financially or through providing content, Afghan officials and media groups say.

“What Iran wants, what they are striving at, is a power base in Afghanistan that can counter American influence,” said a senior government official, who like others for this report, spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

“They are without a doubt doing this through supporting and funding our media.”

Iran spends $100 million a year in Afghanistan, much of it on the media, civil society projects and religious schools, says Daud Moradian, a former foreign ministry advisor who now teaches at the American University in Kabul.

“It is using Afghanistan to send a message to America that it can’t be messed with. Afghanistan becomes a managed battlefield as a result.”

Officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts and the Iranian embassy in Kabul said it was not prepared to talk about the issues raised in this report.

KABUL, May 24 (Reuters) – With most foreign combat troops set to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, Iran is is using the media in the war-ravaged nation to gain influence, a worrying issue for Washington.

Nearly a third of Afghanistan’s media is backed by Iran, either financially or through providing content, Afghan officials and media groups say.

“What Iran wants, what they are striving at, is a power base in Afghanistan that can counter American influence,” said a senior government official, who like others for this report, spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

“They are without a doubt doing this through supporting and funding our media.”

Iran spends $100 million a year in Afghanistan, much of it on the media, civil society projects and religious schools, says Daud Moradian, a former foreign ministry advisor who now teaches at the American University in Kabul.

“It is using Afghanistan to send a message to America that it can’t be messed with. Afghanistan becomes a managed battlefield as a result.”

Officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts and the Iranian embassy in Kabul said it was not prepared to talk about the issues raised in this report.

KABUL (Reuters) – Clouds of hashish and cigarette smoke float across a screen showing a dancing Pakistani woman, who evokes yowls of excitement from the hundreds of Afghan men passing their time in one of the capital’s rundown cinemas.

Once a treasured luxury for the elite, Afghan film connoisseurs are deeply distressed by the dilapidated state of their cinemas, which reflect an industry on the brink of collapse from conflict and financial neglect.

“Before our audiences were educated. Now they are illiterates who understand nothing of cinema and come only to smoke (marijuana),” said Sayed Khalid Sadat, manager of Pameer cinema, which sits on a corner in the bustling centre of Kabul.

Kabul’s cinemas show Pakistani films in Pashto, American action films and Bollywood to rowdy, largely unemployed crowds in pursuit of any distraction from their drab surroundings.

It’s a far cry from the heyday of Afghan-produced film 40 years ago, when cinemagoers were required to wear suits or evening wear.

Pameer is one of seven cinemas operating in the capital, down from the 23 Kabul boasted before the onslaught of the civil war in 1992, which razed two-thirds of the city. They all charge the equivalent of about one dollar per ticket.

Later the Taliban banned cinema, music and television outright during their five-year rule, deeming them un-Islamic and ending a rich tradition in a country that started showing films in the 1920s during the rule of King Amanullah Khan, and shot its first movie in Lahore in 1951.

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Gulam recalls the evening she fled her home in northern Afghanistan on foot, running with her teen daughters under the cloak of darkness to avoid cooking a dinner for 20 Taliban insurgents.

“This Talib burst through my door and demanded I cook for them. But I had no money, and I was scared they would take my daughters,” Gulam said, pulling a stripy shawl tightly around her gaunt and wrinkled face.

That night six months ago, Gulam and her family joined the half a million Afghans who are internally displaced, mostly from conflict but also natural disasters, a number which has been steadily increasing since 2008.

Intensifying violence as NATO combat troops prepare to leave by end-2014 and a poor economic outlook in the face of shrinking aid could spell a humanitarian disaster for Afghanistan, where a third already live beneath the poverty line.

“Security in the country is terrible. Day by day there are more of us,” Gulam told Reuters while visiting the U.N. compound in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province.

She left her mountainous village for a district on Afghanistan’s border with Uzbekistan, where she now lives in rented accommodation. Unable to find work, the widow receives meagerly handouts from male relatives. She says her husband was killed in an insurgent attack.

A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) – Shortly after sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, President George W. Bush focused so intently on freeing Afghan women from the shackles of Taliban rule that empowering them became central to the United States’ mission there.

More than a decade later, as his successor Barack Obama charts a way out of the unpopular war, Afghan girls are back in school, infant and maternal survival rates are up and a quarter of the parliament’s seats are reserved for women who at least on paper have the same voting, mobility and other rights as men.

But Obama rarely speaks about that progress, delegating discussion of women’s rights to his secretary of state and other top diplomats so he can focus on narrower goals for Afghanistan: uprooting the militants there and getting out.

Obama’s lack of overt attention to Afghan women has led many to fear their hard-fought gains will slip away as the United States hands off security responsibility to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with ever-present Taliban leaders still holding sway in much of the countryside.

Women’s issues are not on the formal agenda at the NATO summit the United States will be hosting in Chicago later this month. Afghanistan is poised to send an all-male delegation.

Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said it was “really worrying” that Obama only made a passing reference to women on his trip to Afghanistan last week, when he affirmed a general need “to protect the human rights of all Afghans – men and women, boys and girls.”

Obama’s choice of words also was noticed in Afghanistan, which remains a conservative and male-dominated Islamic country. Gulalai Safi, a female member of parliament from northern Balkh province, said it was “somewhat of a shame” that he did not use the visit to underline women’s rights.

WASHINGTON/KABUL, May 10 (Reuters) – Shortly after sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, President George W. Bush focused so intently on freeing Afghan women from the shackles of Taliban rule that empowering them became central to the United States’ mission there.

More than a decade later, as his successor Barack Obama charts a way out of the unpopular war, Afghan girls are back in school, infant and maternal survival rates are up and a quarter of the parliament’s seats are reserved for women who at least on paper have the same voting, mobility and other rights as men.

But Obama rarely speaks about that progress, delegating discussion of women’s rights to his secretary of state and other top diplomats so he can focus on narrower goals for Afghanistan: uprooting the militants there and getting out.

Obama’s lack of overt attention to Afghan women has led many to fear their hard-fought gains will slip away as the United States hands off security responsibility to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with ever-present Taliban leaders still holding sway in much of the countryside.

Women’s issues are not on the formal agenda at the NATO summit the United States will be hosting in Chicago later this month. Afghanistan is poised to send an all-male delegation.

Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said it was “really worrying” that Obama only made a passing reference to women on his trip to Afghanistan last week, when he affirmed a general need “to protect the human rights of all Afghans – men and women, boys and girls.”

Obama’s choice of words also was noticed in Afghanistan, which remains a conservative and male-dominated Islamic country. Gulalai Safi, a female member of parliament from northern Balkh province, said it was “somewhat of a shame” that he did not use the visit to underline women’s rights.

KABUL (Reuters) – Better healthcare and more girls attending school have knocked Afghanistan from its position as the worst place on earth to be a mother, Save the Children said in a major report on Tuesday, but stressed the precarious nature of any gains.

“More mothers are surviving and fewer children are dying and this is something we need to be celebrating,” said Rachel Maranto, Advocacy and Mobilisation senior Manager at Save the Children in Kabul.

Afghanistan switched places with Niger in western Africa in Save the Children’s ‘Mothers’ Index’, which fell back to bottom place, a spot Afghanistan occupied for the past two years.

This was partly achieved by the number of births attended by trained professionals in Afghanistan rising from 14 percent to 24 percent between 2003 and 2008, and girls in formal education, which has gone from zero in 2001 to 2.5 million today.

Afghan women have won back hard-fought rights in education, voting and work since the five-year austere rule of the Taliban was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001.

But their plight remains severe and Maranto warned that such gains are “fragile”.

LOT MORE TO DO

KABUL (Reuters) – Spot made the clandestine journey from the Afghan Taliban stronghold of Helmand to the capital Kabul, where he is undergoing medical treatment before moving to the United States to live with the family of the Marine who rescued him.

His ears clipped and tail severed from his days as a fighting dog, the surprisingly docile ginger and white mutt is one of hundreds being adopted in increasing numbers by foreign soldiers, who pay vast sums to take their new pets home.

“Dogs have been proven to help post-traumatic stress and the soldiers who adopt them are addressing this,” said Pen Farthing, founder of British charity Nowzad, an animal shelter on the outskirts of Kabul.

A former Royal Marine, Farthing adopted his dog Nowzad, named after a Helmand district, during his tour there in 2006. He then set up the charity, where dogs and some cats are neutered and vaccinated against rabies before their journeys abroad.

Nowzad has given homes to over 330 dogs since it was founded, mostly to soldiers from the U.S. and Britain, but also from South Africa, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.

It costs around $3,000 to get a dog from Afghanistan to its new home, and Nowzad relies solely on much-needed donations. It is now trying to raise $250,000 for a new plot of land.

The dogs’ birthplaces in some way reflect the thrust of the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents, which has experienced some of its toughest fighting in the militants’ southern bastions.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s media representatives are appealing to the government to protect the rights of journalists who are facing a growing number of violent threats in what they see as an undeclared campaign against media freedom.

War and an atmosphere of impunity make Afghanistan one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. The Taliban often regard reporters as their enemies and many officials are suspicious of a prying press.

Despite media freedom being protected by the constitution, the relatively large, often Western-backed press corps can face intimidation, abduction or even death for reporting on issues such as corruption and other government failings.

“Day by day, it is getting worse. No one is here to support reporters,” Sediq Zalique, head of investigative reporting at national daily “8 a.m.”, told Reuters on Friday.

Zalique said he had received several threatening phone calls from unidentified men in what he believes was a response to his articles revealing corruption and drug-running by officials.

Many Afghans view the government as deeply corrupt.

Some media hold back from publishing stories they know will attract the government’s ire.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – In 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev said heroin was a threat to Russia’s national security. This year, Russia pledged to finance programs to reduce the harm done by drug use, including an HIV crisis that is one of the most severe in the world.

But even though the number of new HIV infections in Russia jumped 10 percent over 2011, health workers and global HIV authorities say Moscow has not honored that promise. This is not due to a lack of cash – Russia is doubling its budget for HIV in 2012 from 2010 levels. At issue is how it will use the funds.

From next year, no money will go to such internationally recognized efforts as needle exchanges. None has ever gone to heroin substitution: the Russian authorities oppose it. Moscow doesn’t believe these approaches help slow the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“Working on drug dependency is more effective than needle exchange and methadone programs,” said Alexei Mazus, who heads the Moscow Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention, one of around 100 such venues across the country run by the health ministry.

In areas where needle exchanges have taken place, he said the health ministry had seen new HIV cases increase, not fall.

Russia’s health ministry said last year it had evidence that HIV rates have tripled in areas where foreign-run needle exchange programs were running.

The United Nations says so-called “harm reduction” programs – needle exchanges, and using methadone as a substitute for heroin – are effective in slowing the spread of HIV. Methadone reduces the risk of infection by dirty needles because it can be swallowed, rather than injected.