generalspeaking

Internally Displaced Afghans

"This is the first time we've ever fled our village. The bombs don't understand who is the enemy and who is the friend."
"We are all waiting here for assistance. In my whole life, I have never lived in such a pathetic situation."
Bibi Gul, Afghan refugee, Kunduz, Afghanistan

"You have a different kind of fighting going on now. Now, you're seeing a more indiscriminate use of mortars in populated areas, and an increasing number of women and children impacted."
Catherine Howard, acting head, United Nations' humanitarian operations, Afghanistan

"It's becoming more and more violent now. Civilians are increasingly caught in the crossfire."
Heman Nagarathnam, head, Doctors Without Borders, northern Afghanistan

A man walks away from a tent in Kunduz city, Afghanistan where his family now lives after being displaced by the war. (Majid Saeedi /For the Washington Post)

When the combined NATO and United Nation member-forces headed by the U.S. military were stationed in Afghanistan and fighting the Taliban, their decade of attempting to cope with a two-pronged purpose -- to keep the terrorist fighters at bay, protecting the people of Afghanistan while seeking to capture al-Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden, and at the same time helping a war-torn country to begin administering itself and build civic institutions -- there was a fine balance to maintain.

That balance was exemplified in the 'winning hearts and minds' strategy, to convince Afghans who have been traditionally invaded, their country becoming a perpetual war zone, that the foreign troops were there to help them in their struggle against religion-inspired oppression and lead them to a type of democratic installation where schools, medical clinics, the established covenant of equality and opportunities could transform the broken society.

In the prosecution of the war, efforts were made to protect civilian life. In response to the type of guerrilla warfare that best suited an ill-equipped barbarian militia -- a kind of warfare called 'assymetrical' where an established conventional military had to learn to cope with improvised explosive devices and furtive night-time attacks by a very mobile and aggressive opponent who could meld readily with the population to effect escape -- it was sometimes difficult to avoid civilian deaths.

Then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai often went into paroxysms of fury when U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the Taliban inadvertently hit civilian targets killing men, women and children. Profound regrets, apologies and reparations did little to soften his rage as he accused the West of deliberately targetting his people, even as he visited capitals of countries which had sent their military members to fight on behalf of Afghanistan's freedom from terror, begging them to continue their presence in his country.

Well, Hamid Karzai is gone from the presidency, and foreign troops are gone from the country. Now, it is the Afghan military and the national police, both trained by Western battle instructors on best military practices which are defending the country and the people of the country. And they are doing it with the assistance of military machines and weapons given them by the departing foreign militaries' governments and funding infused from those same foreign treasuries.

So how're they doing? There is now a desperate migration from rural areas of the northeast of the country, people anxious to escape the conflict, the war zones that target them in their towns and villages and on their farms, as they struggle to reach the closest city where they will huddle and hope for rescue from fear and privation. The NATO mission wrapped up, the fighting shifted from the south and east to the northeast.


Afghans who had never before suffered the fear and misery of conflict now fully understand how dreadful their situation is. Afghan security forces with scant U.S. air support face fiercer ground battles with the Taliban and civilians are increasingly trapped in the path of mortars, rockets and the crossfire of bullets. The Taliban has fragmented, some militias joining with ISIS, others loyal to al-Qaeda.

Close to a million Afghans representing three percent of the population is now displaced with the numbers steadily increasing. They leave their villages as foreign fighters take their properties and warn them to leave. "If you don't leave, we will kill your sons in front of your eyes", one woman recounted the threat her family received, causing them to grasp what they could and walk to Kunduz from their village. There they settled in a field alongside thousands of others waitig for help.

In this woman's case, Jamillah sent her son Abdul back to the village to fetch their livestock. Eventually a village elder alerted her to the fact that her house had been destroyed when a mortar and rockets hit it, and her ten-year-old son Abdul was killed along with their cow and their hens. "Some of the elders buried my son", said Jamillah, as she sat under a blanket tent with her three-year-old and eight-month-old sons.

A woman named Jamillah holds her baby inside a tent in a barren field in Kunduz city. She fled her village in Chardara district after her house was caught in the conflict. (Majid Saeedi/For The Washington Post)

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Refugees, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, July 16, 2015