Continued militancy makes future bleak for Afghans

By Abdul Haleem

"I have little hope to return home safe and sound in the evening," the nine-year-old Rahmat Khan said.

Selling shopping bags in a dusty bazaar along Kabul river to support his five-member family, Khan said that he and his elder brother both earn between 150 Afghanis (3 U.S. dollars) to 250 Afghanis (5 U.S. dollars) daily.

His elder brother washes cars in the afternoon and attends school in the morning.

Revealing his ordeal, the child said that his father was a shopkeeper and one day last year when he was going to his shop, suddenly a suicide bomber targeted foreign troops in Hodkhil area killing several persons including his father.

"My father was martyred in the suicide attack and since then I cannot attend school regularly," the minor Khan, a student of grade three lamented.

"I loved my father very much. Every evening when he came home from shop, He brought for me chocolate and chews gum. He liked me very much," the lovely child recalled.

Rahmat Khan is not the only Afghan child having lost father and lives in misery.

Protracted conflicts and continued militancy have left thousands of Afghan people including women and children dead, injured and homeless.

Militants in the latest wave of violent attacks carried out a bicycle bomb in a bazaar in Nadali district of southern Helmand province Wednesday killing three civilians, all of whom bread earners of their families and wounding five others, including a soldier.

"Almost every morning I say goodbye to all family members and kiss all my children as I am concerned about my security and wonder if I would return home safely," Hassebullah, 38, said.

Working for a private company and had lost three of his relatives in two separate suicide attacks in the capital city Kabul over the past 18 months, Hassebullah observed that militancy has smashed the hope for future.

The fortified capital city Kabul has experienced series of suicide attacks and bombings over the past couple of years that has claimed hundreds of lives mostly civilians.

A deadly suicide car bomb on Dec. 15 targeted Wazir Akbar Khan area, a diplomatic enclave in the capital city, left eight civilians dead and wounded 40 others.

It was the fourth suicide attack in the capital city Kabul since August.

The hard-core militants fighting Afghan and the NATO-led troops in the post-Taliban Afghanistan launched a suicide car bombing outside the NATO-led forces headquarters in mid August killing seven Afghans and wounding 91 including some NATO soldiers.

Furthermore, similar attack on Sept. 17 left six Italian soldiers dead and injured 39 others mostly civilian passersby.

Another deadly suicide attack against the Indian embassy opposite to the Interior Ministry on Oct. 8 left 12 dead and wounded 83 others, with almost all of them civilians.

In the latest suicide bombing that apparently targeted former Vice President Ahmad Zia Masoud in the well-guarded Wazir Akbar Khan district, families living around have been badly damaged.

Zia Masoud escaped unhurt but his secretary Abdul Qadus, the only son of family, along with two body guards, according to local media, were killed in the bloody blast.

"Contrary to other nations, human blood is the cheapest one in Afghanistan. If you are killed no one would follow your case and no one hears your petition and to no one pays heed to the plight of your children," another Afghan Ahmad Sayed said.

In Afghanistan, enemy is shadowy and can attack from all directions which often claim the life of innocent non-combatants including women and children, Sayed said.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), according to local media reports, had recorded 2,021 civilian deaths, killed in militancy and armed conflicts between January to October 2009 in the country.

The number of Afghan civilians killed in the first 10 months of 2008 and 2007, according to media reports were 1,838 and 1,275 respectively.

Kabul is not the only Afghan city targeted by militants.

The militants, in efforts to mount pressure on the administration, do not spare other cities as on December 21 five suicide bombers occupied a building in the eastern Paktia province wounding 11 people with majority of them civilians including a woman.

The militants, according to a statement issued by the Afghan Defense Ministry, have succeeded in carrying out 3,170 cases of terrorist attacks in 2009 causing casualties mostly on innocent non-combatants.

"Continued militancy, suicide attacks, endless war and Killing by shadowy enemy have ruined my hope for future and discouraged meto send children to school," said Sayed, a witness to the deadly Dec. 15 suicide attack.