Our soldiers in children's hell

The NZ SAS is returning to a country which needs aid more than soldiers and where children are the main breadwinners. GEORGINA NEWMAN, of the Christian Children's Fund, reports


For many people, September 11 was the day that changed the world, but life in Afghanistan more than two years on is as harsh as ever.

Unlike most of the international peacekeepers who remain in the sanctuary of the capital, Kabul, New Zealand special forces returning there in two weeks will venture into the vast lawless provinces where life has changed little since the Stone Age, let alone the fall of the Taleban.

While the media's glare has shone brightly on Iraq, attention to Afghanistan has dwindled. Kabul, which houses the moderate President Hamid Karzai, is the centre of a country that is crumbling.

Presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June are a critical milestone for the country and its fledgling desire for democracy.

Afghanistan is teetering on anarchy's brink. The semi-feudal country has been battered by centuries of war, controlled in the most part by warlords, and where most of the population cannot even spell the word "democracy" let alone vote for a new government by June. It will be a bumpy road from bullets to ballots.

The spectre of the Taleban is re-emerging in rural regions, making vast no-go areas for troops and aid agencies. Violence is endangering Afghanistan's political and economic progress and hindering desperately needed redevelopment.

In the past four months there have been more attacks on civilians than in the 20 months following the Taleban's fall. According to the UN, since September 2002 armed assaults on aid workers have soared from one a month to one every two days.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan waits on a laboriously slow reconstruction process. It's been a bitter winter for most, as there's little electricity.

Families in the ruins of their homes have no money to put glass in the windows or repair a bomb-damaged roof. Here, feeding children rice is a luxury.

Children have become the main breadwinners, touting for jobs or huddled in corners, palms outstretched. Many die from the cold.

In the ill-equipped hospitals, doctors go without their salaries for another month. Under-resourced teachers prepare for a new school year with scant materials.

In the countryside, farmers await their next crop of poppies to mature to sell on as heroin.

The New Zealand SAS will arrive in a decaying country which needs aid more than soldiers to rebuild after being demolished by decades of conflict and years of drought.

The Christian Children's Fund has worked in Afghanistan since the terror attacks and has witnessed the devastating effects the war on terrorism is wreaking on the country's children.

It was the brutality of war and the burden of poverty that stole 13-year-old Mah Gul Amin's childhood.

"When the Taleban captured our village they came to our home," Mah Gul said. "They started hitting my father, my mother tried to rescue him, but the Taleban soldiers started hitting her as well and she was pregnant and the baby was harmed. After some days she delivered a dead baby and she still suffers now because of it.

"After this we moved to another village, but my father had no source of income. He was so needy that he arranged for me to be engaged to marry an older farmer even though I was only 8 years old."

Life for the children of Afghanistan is a daily battle for survival. Many don't make it. The statistics are a tragic illustration of misrule and underdevelopment. Three out of 10 children die before the age of 5, and half of those who do manage to survive that long are severely malnourished.

It is virtually unheard of for a child in New Zealand to die from something as trifling as measles, yet 35,000 children in Afghanistan will die this year alone - simply because they haven't been vaccinated.

Afghanistan has the highest maternal mortality rate on the planet. The situation appears to be unremittingly grim - yet the children are the greatest carriers of hope.

The Christian Children's Fund has established more than 40 child wellbeing projects, mainly in the northern provinces of Kunduz, Takhar and Badakshan to help to identify and help children most at risk with literacy and life skills training, healthcare and trauma counselling.

Noor Nisa, aged 12, lives in the northeast region of Khuja e Ghar. She has seen more atrocities than any child should.

"I lost my mother during the fighting. She was washing the dishes in the yard when a rocket exploded in our village. She was pregnant and I watched her bleed to death. I cried a lot, but crying didn't bring my mother back. After my mother died, I don't remember a day in which I didn't cry.

"Now we have peace I have joined the child well-being committee, and at least I am happy with my friends. We work on community projects and plan things like vocational training and civic works for our village.

"We need peace and secure lives. Then maybe we can laugh again."