Addicted Children in Afghanistan!

What can be worse than this?

Forced Marriages in Afghanistan

Throughout the world, there are 49 countries that have forced marriage or child bride problems. Forced marriage is simply breach of basic human rights. It is a form of domestic violence and child abuse that contributes to a society’s problems.

Afghanistan is one of the Islamic countries where people hold strongly tight to customs and traditions. Breaking the tradition of marrying young children, both boys and girls, is not only difficult, but near impossible in most urban districts.

In the rural areas of Afghanistan, girls are mostly married between ages of 7 to 11. It is really rare that a girl reaches the age of 16 and is not married. The customs, traditions and community they live in make it impossible for girls to break free from forced marriages. They do not get ask to speak for self desire. The fathers in the families mostly decide, as the mothers do not get involved in the decisions, because they are women.

By marrying  children in early ages, families are putting them in situations of isolation, health problems, abuse, suicide and lack of education. They believe, they are doing best for their children and without their consents, they bond them into marriage contracts.

However, they don’t consider that forced marriage affect women and young children adversely. It involves negative situations like threatening behavior, emotional blackmail, physical violence, rape, sexual abuse, suicide and even murder and young children are obviously not in the capacity to handle such pressure.

According to a United Nations’ report, between 60 to 80 percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced marriages. The report states that the reason why girls are dragged into forced marriages are; repayment of debts; to solve a dispute and to pay family expenses. Moreover, It is obvious among Pashtons, that their widow will never marry someone out of their family, as they always marry the brother of their deceased husband. However in a non-Pashton family, the girl is asked to marry her brother-in-law to get support for the children of her sister. Even worse, some sisters are married to pay for the crime of their brothers by marrying the victims.

So, people in Afghanistan believe it is part of culture to marry a girl before age of 18th and not let her have a say, but they should consider that forcing a girl to marry cannot be regarded as cultural practice in any society.  It is a violation of basic human rights. Therefore, women as part of society should be able to freely express their choices about their lifestyle desires.

The video bellow is history of a 12 year girl who was forced into marriage. She ran away to break free from her in-laws, but unfortunately was arrested and in form of punishment by her husband (a Talib) she lost her nose and ear Read more!. 

Click play to view her video 

Why do you think this child is crying?

Do you think she is crying, because

     - She lost her family,

      - She is hungry,
      - She is beaten,
      - She is victimized,
      - She is kidnapped,
      - She is sold,
      - She is lost,
      - She is exchanged for food, or
      - She is scared of explosion ,
There are thousand reasons to why children are crying in Afghanistan. I only named some of them, but i would like you to look at the photo again, think a bit deeper and then write; why do you think this child is crying?

God Bless Afghanistan!

What is War From an Afghan Child's Prespective?

War is a scary event which happens to destroy cities, lives and take everything a person would have in life. It is always difficult for children to understand what war is and why it happens. If children get affected by a frightening event like war, that affection would remain with them for the rest of their lives. It might cause them aggression, depression, disability and stress. Children who are affected by war mostly live with an inside anger that may finally drag them into smuggling, murder and drug trafficking. These will contribute enormous problems for society which is hard to control and eliminate.

I have interviewed a number of children and some other locals in Afghanistan about war. I still remember the innocent faces of those three kids who were following me in kabul at Chicken Street. They were begging for 10 or 20 Afghani which is around 50 cent of a dollar. I took them down the road and sat for a while and asked them.

• Why you kids are on street and running behind people for money?
• The obvious answers were, ‘we need money to eat!’
• I asked, are you the only money makers in the family?
• Two of them said yes. One of them said no, my mother also works. She cooks bread for our neighbor once in a week and they pay her. She also begs on street like me, but not Chicken Street. She is on main road.
• I asked, why do not your fathers or your older brothers work?
• The painful answers were; ‘they are all dead in war.’
• I asked, what does war mean to you all and why war happens? I got three different answers.
• a) war is the rocket which comes from sky and kills people like my father, b) war is a bomb and blow up people and c) war is Taliban.

However the concept of war was different in case of an old woman who knocked on my door for money and food. She hardly was walking and came all the way up to 5th floor to have a piece of bread, or money or clothes for winter.

• I asked her, mother Jan (dear), you are not in age of begging, what your story is and why you are begging?
• The old woman said. I lost my son in war, he was dead in a rocket and I have his children to support.
• I asked, what about your daughter in- law, is not she working?
• She said, she was working during Taliban, but she was caught and beaten badly by a Talib on street. Although, she mentioned that her husband is dead and she has to support her family, but was not reasonable for Taliban. She was in pain for a week and then died.
• I asked, mother Jan how would you describe war?
• She said, war means lost with no return. It took everything i had in life and made me to beg for family support.
• I asked, then why war happens, do you know?
• She said, strangers want to take the piece of land we are living in that is why war happens.

Well! This was the definition of war from an old woman perspective. However, this was again different in the case of a taxi driver. When i asked him, what is war and why it happens? He said, war happens because politicians work for self-interest rather than country and children and poor people are then victimized of their actions. It looks like Afghanistan is suffering from civil war for many years and poor people have been shouldering the burden of war. But the fact is transparent that children are mostly the victims. They are suffering with every breath they take. They experience awful days like, heavy labor, playing with guns, watching people dying in front of their eyes, making money and not having enough to eat and wear (see children of conflict). So, who is responsible for this? Who takes accountability of these victimized children? Do you think government will be able to help these children return to school? Do you think we will have a stable country to return and help people? Do you think we will have Afghanistan back?

An Afghan Girl Ambition to Work for UN/NGO

When I was a little girl, I used to wake up every morning to watch my father getting ready for his work. He was an English translator in Red Cross and mostly was on travel. I loved the fact that he was so neat, organize and professional. He loved to be always in black suit, white shirt and a beautiful black tie. He was picked up by a white land cruiser with a Red Cross sign and a nice flog right in front of it. My father used to drop me to school every day and I loved the fact to use and get a ride on his car, not that I was interested at school. There was a morning when I waked up and realized, my father was already gone. I was extremely disappointed and continuously crying. I said to mom, 'why dad went with out seeing and dropping me to school'. Mom with a beautiful smile said, 'he had a meeting to attend and went to be there to prepare for his presentation'. I still remember, like last night dream to what I said to mom, I said, 'dad seems to be really proud of his car, tell him that one day I will grow up and will have such a car coming to pick me up and that day I would not give him a left'. Mom laughed and said, ok do so, but now stop crying and go to school. Years, months, weeks and days passed by, and I happened to be in grade 12. Our house was close to UNHCR and MSF office, and every morning when I was going to school, I used to see MSF and UNHCR land cruisers with the white and red flogs hanging. Glance of those cars was just a meal of mind and motivation engine to me. That was making me to work hard and get close to my destination. Grade 12 was a busy year, because I had to prepare for my entrance exam for university. I used to wake up at 6am and leave home at 6.30. I started my day with private Mathematic class, then school, after school, directly to English language course for 2 hours, and then to computer class for another 2 hours. I totally had no break, and by the time I went home, I totally was exhausted and had my breakfast, lunch and dinner all together. Every evening I was studying till late to review the day lessons. I was totally full and had a lot of energy to spend. Sometimes when I look back, I really feel proud of myself, I was so strong and energetic covering all at one day with out any break.We had MSF office in our neighborhood. People working there seem to know my father. One day they asked my father to find a Dari teacher for one of MSF expatriate. I still remember the day when my father came with the proposal of Dari Teacher. He said Tahera would you like to be a  teacher, I said, “dad you know what I want to be, then why you are asking this, beside I am extremely busy with my finals, I don’t want to be a teacher”. My father said, OK decision is yours, but there is a guy I know and he is looking for someone to teach a French girl in MSF, Dari, its only one hour every day at her lunch time. I said what? NGO! Of course I am going to go and do it. I accepted the offer because I knew it would be a good opportunity to know the NGO’s culture and environment and then I can make my way to where I want to be. I was happy teaching Katherine (French girl) Dari and we had nice one hour every day. One day Katherine asked me if I am interested to be her assistant as full time employee. I said I would love to be so and accepted the job offer with all my heart. This was where my career with NGO/UN started.

I believe every child has the right to dream and make an ambition. Unfortunately, the situation in Afghanistan took this right from our children. Probably I was one of the luckiest children in Afghanistan, who had family support and motivation to achieve what I wanted to achieve. But unluckily, today in Afghanistan, most of our children are the family earners, or they are with their widow mothers on street and begging for money. The other side of awful fact is that children on street are victimized by drugs, criticism, child obvious, murder, or poverty forces them into smuggling ( please see further down the video about children into smuggling). They don’t get a chance to dream, or go to school, or to be what they want to be. If you walk down on street and stop a child to ask, "what do you want to be in the future?" they all would say, a doctor, engineer, teacher, minister, but non of them would say murderer, killer, drug trafficker, not because they don’t know what they are, but because they don’t want to be so, but they are drawn  there and they get into a point where coming back for there is so damn hard. To look deeper into Afghan children life please click the link Children life in Afghanistan!