The Children of Afghanistan

Bearing the Brunt of War

         The first time I went to Afghanistan, I brought little else than my camera and an open mind.   It was 2002, and was my first visit to an area of real conflict.   I spent several days walking around Kabul or Jalalabad, learning how to function in such a place, and how to take it all in.

         I remember being amazed at the smiling children in every neighborhood I walked through.   They had known only a life of war and poverty, but they acted just like I did when I was a kid, though they might've been climbing on destroyed tanks near a minefield instead of on swings in a playground.      

         My return to Afghanistan this summer has offered opportunities to meet children in more intimate settings.   I was working for a disability organization called Handicap International, documenting their admirable efforts with photography.   Much of the time, I traveled around to different programs supported by them.

         In medical clinics, in schools for the deaf, the blind, and the physically disabled, and in homes, I met many children from the country's most vulnerable populations.   Of course, in a place like Afghanistan, everyone is vulnerable to the forces of war, but children always bear an unfair percentage of the horrors.   Everywhere I went, though, I was still greeted with the same friendly, interested smiles I'd been intrigued by, four years earlier.  

         Children are the most open and accepting members of any society.   It's a shame that in places where life is tough, they aren't spared its toughness.  

         Not only do land mines blow off children's legs routinely, there are many other dangers that befall Afghanistan's children that parents in America don't have to worry about - polio, cholera, typhoid, meningitis, hemorrhagic fever, leishmaniasis, and the list goes on and on.   In the first year of life, over one in ten children die.   By age five, over twenty-five percent are dead.

         Of those that survive, huge numbers are in some way disabled, and I met countless children with missing limbs, or that had other obvious lifelong problems.   It can take some getting used to, seeing a hydrocephalic child with a grotesquely large head (and resulting brain damage) that an operation, routine in developed countries, could've completely alleviated.  

         In a dark, unsanitary room, I saw an infant who had been severely burned with kerosene when her mother tried to fill an unsafe container with cooking fuel.   Her older sister, about eight years old, was burned too, but not as badly, and had bandages stretched over her neck, shoulder, chest, and part of her face.   A yellow and brown headscarf was wrapped on top of her head.   She often sat with her little sister(who had almost no chance of surviving), but she would surprise me by darting around the room unexpectedly, and I kept seeing her peering at me from behind doorways with curious eyes.      

         We would smile at each other, and though very quiet, she was playful toward me.   Her face showed an unconditional kindness and an eagerness to make connections with others that she had not yet learned to cover up, and that I can't come close to.

         This pure childlike strength is part of what makes kids able to deal with things that they shouldn't ever see.   It also makes it all the more tragic when you know what this little girl can likely expect to look forward to, growing up in Afghanistan.