"I would like some meat, a blanket and a television, in that order," The Guardian
torresD
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Refugees_in_Britain/Story/0,2763,626006,00.html
Kabul tries to cope with orphan influx
Agencies buckle under strain
Rory Carroll in Kabul
Monday December 31, 2001
The Guardian
The arrival of peace has paradoxically prompted
Afghan families to send their children on to the streets
and into orphanages in record numbers, according to aid workers.
In the past few weeks the number of children begging,
hawking and stealing has grown dramatically while some
orphanages have more than quadrupled their intake,
straining resources to breaking point.
Kabul's population of street-children has surged
from 25,000 five years ago to 70,000 today,
according to some estimates, and is likely to
swell further as more families flock to the capital
in search of jobs which do not exist.
Every day parents queue outside the city's two
orphanages to deliver infants to what they
presume will be better care than they can
provide at home.
Aid workers said the phenomenon was an
unexpected by-product of peace because
parents too poor to feed and educate offspring
properly were exploiting opportunities unavailable
until now.
Family planning was a casualty of war;
most children seem to have at least five siblings.
"They just keep coming.
Two months ago we had 60
children, today we have 450,"
said Koga Halim, head of one of Kabul's two orphanages.
In many cases one parent, usually the mother,
was alive but destitute and saw no alternative,
said Mr Halim.
Both orphanages were nearing capacity and
the authorities were preparing to open a third, he said.
Yesterday's newest arrivals were four brothers:
Fawad, 8, Nawid, 7, and Habit and Salim, twins aged 5.
All had their heads freshly shaved to avoid lice.
Their father was a doctor who died two
years ago in a Taliban rocket attack,
leaving the family with no income,
so their mother sent them to the orphanage,
where they will stay until they are teenagers, said Fawad.
"She was very sad but I'm happy to be here.
There are lots of children to
play with and there is more food."
Many of the families were ethnic Tajiks returning
years after being sent away by the Taliban,
a largely ethnic Pashtun regime which did not
want enemy children benefiting from state care, said Mr Halim.
"The Taliban knew the parents couldn't
really look after them but they sent most
of them home anyway," he said.
Conditions at both orphanages are grim.
Breakfast amounts to tea and bread,
while lunch and dinner usually consist of
rice with maybe some beans and tuna.
A bucket of cold water every 10 days
is the closest the children come to a bath.
They wash their own clothes without soap.
Blankets and mattresses are threadbare and
filthy and there is seldom oil or wood to light the
stoves, which in many cases are broken.
Cracked windows whip draughts into unlit
corridors and dormitories with 15-year-old
stains on the walls.
"I would like some meat, a blanket and a television, in that order,"
said Sherif Aullah, 13, one of 870
children at Kabul's main orphanage.
Trucks with food and bedclothes have
started to arrive and conditions are improving,
although some children claimed their carers
kept chocolate, fruit and notebooks for themselves.
Abdul Habib Sameem, the director general of
orphan affairs in the interim Afghan government,
said that staff had not been paid in five months
and the little medicine available was out of date.
Out on the streets it was business as usual
for the pint-sized hawkers of chewing gum,
plastic bags and nuts.
The beggars carried blackened tins of incense,
a symbol of good luck, and weaved between
cars and carts.
The scavengers examined litter in ditches
and bathed their finds in puddles.
All are seen as potential thieves.
"It is very dangerous for our society because
when they become teenagers they have the
potential to become very good gangsters,"
said Mr Shamim, the deputy director of
Aschiana, an Afghan charity which educates
and shelters street children.
"But when they are young they are
the victims and often end up traumatised."
Physical attacks were on the rise,
especially against girls.
"People do not like to see them on the streets
so they are insulted, beaten and misused,"
said Mr Shamim.
But poverty and drought were driving
ever more families into Kabul for work.
The city's rapid expansion was
straining resources, said the UN refugee agency.
Aschiana's three centres host 1,434 children
plucked from the streets by social workers.
The charity teaches literacy, mine-awareness,
woodwork, sewing, painting and flower-making,
vocational skills intended to last a lifetime.
Along with other boys doing the same thing,
Toryali, 11, cut green paper into elaborate shapes.
He could make 35 paper flowers a day and
hoped to boost productivity to help support his
nine brothers and sisters.
Only once did he look up from his work,
to confess ambition.
"I want to open my own shop and employ them all."
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Henry
An unlimited amount of childbirths but not enough resources.
torresD wrote:
--
And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!
Francis Scott Key
Observador
Hey give that crap some "Lechon Asao' " or give them
ham sandwiches, hahahaha, Oh! oh wait a second, those
sand monkeys dont eat pork....ohhhh, I guess they will starve to
death, would'nt it be a shame.
On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 21:55:04 GMT, "torresD" <torr...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
Sandar
> Too bad Muslims do not permit adoptions to non-Muslims!
> An unlimited amount of childbirths but not enough resources.
>
solution and you know it. SO stop being a pain in the neck.
torresD
"Sandar" <mip...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:5dc0f156.02011...@posting.google.com...
> Henry <her...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:<3C3F614F...@mindspring.com>...
> > Too bad Muslims do not permit adoptions to non-Muslims!
> > An unlimited amount of childbirths but not enough resources.
Do Jews in Israel, with their Jewish only roads,
permit adoption of Jewish children to Christians?