16 Aug 2010 | no comments » Children
Afghanistan is the worst country for a child to be born in, according to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. Three decades of ongoing conflict have left tens of thousands of children orphaned on the street. The challenges are daunting, especially for children and women. Even though political and economic uncertainty and personal and community insecurity still exist in much of Afghanistan. 1 in 4 children die before reaching their 5th birthday. Only 50% of all Afghan children between the ages of 7 and 13 attend school.
22 May 2010 | 1 comment » Children
“Early morning my mother gave me these eggs to sell them in the street in order to buy food. It was too cold to hold these in my frozen hands. The eggs were supposed to help us survive, but i am not to go back like this…” the child said.
Nowadays, many Afghan children are working and selling eggs, cigarettes, plastic bags, chewing gum, and lots of other cheap things in the streets. Many others lay naked on the streets to attract passionate people to give them money.
Many others have been taken from the streets and smuggled into Pakistan. A few smugglers have been arrested but they are still active.
20 May 2010 | 1 comment » Bamyan, Children
Many of the impoverished families living in the caves say they are too poor to live anywhere else even though the government insists that they are doing damage to an the area, near the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, which is a rare archaeological site. All are refugees who fled areas of fighting during the Taliban era, and have now returned from the other parts of Afghanistan. The cave dwellers are all Hazara, who are religiously and ethnically distinct and survivors of intense persecution by the Taliban.
26 Mar 2010 | no comments » Drug
In this photo taken December. 22, 2008, a man inhales heroin in the abandoned Russian Cultural Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. The former cultural center is inhabited by drug users, despite being badly damaged by war. A U.S. Department of State report in 2009 estimated there are two million drug users in the country with at least 50-60,000 drug addicts in Kabul alone. Curbing the cultivation of opium poppies, which are used to make heroin, is the goal of a U.S. program that has doled out $80 million (54 million euros) since 2007. That includes the $38.7 million (26 million euros) the U.S. announced it is giving to 27 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces that either reduced poppy cultivation by more than 10 percent or became poppy-free this year.
Afghanistan is, as of March, 2008, the greatest illicit (in Western World standards) opium producer in the world, before Burma (Myanmar), part of the so-called “Golden Crescent”. Opium production in Afghanistan has been on the rise since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. Based on UNODC data, there has been more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004–2007) than in any one year during Taliban rule.
18 Feb 2010 | no comments » Herat, historical
This citadel, which has been suggested as another possible site for Alexander’s fort, is known today as the Citadel of Herat or Qal’a-ye Ikhtiyar al-Din. The name Ikhtiyar al-Din, which refers to both the eastern and western enclosures, is thought to be the name or epithet of a Kartid amir or military commander. Destroyed a second time by Timur’s army (1380), Qal’a-ye Ikhtiyar al-Din was rebuilt after Shah Rukh (reg. 1405-1444) moved his capital to Herat and began a building campaign. He reinforced the citadel in stone and fired brick and covered its exterior with glazed tiles.
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