Number of street kids rises along with poverty in Afghanistan

Andrew Hammond reports that the number of street children in Afghanistan is in the hundreds of thousands. This horrendous problem is the result of a high level of poverty, which in turn has been exacerbated by three decades of war and civil war. The US has been indirectly or directly involved all this time in generating the devastating conditions that deepen poverty, destabilize or destroy communities and families, and result in a large and growing number of street children.

I found Hammond's article, "War, corruption swell number of street kids," at: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE68400H.htm, September 6, 2010. Here are excerpts from the article.

Andrew Hammond:

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...the disturbing reality in this war-torn nation -- where Western powers battle Islamist forces to maintain a friendly government in power -- is that at least 600,000 street children have no safety net to catch them.

The problem, experts say, is getting worse because of the deepening war and the scourge of corruption, despite the inflow of more than $35 billion from foreign donors since the Taliban were removed from power in 2001.

The dangers for children are many, they say: from drugs to the insurgency, from criminal gangs to sexual abuse.

"Poverty is getting worse in Afghanistan and children are forced to find work," said Shafiqa Zaher, a social worker with Aschiana, the group receiving U.S. aid for its work.

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Some 7,000 in the main cities of Afghanistan are attending Aschiana schools, where food and stationery costs are taken care of and some families are assigned sponsors.

Most have a home to go to, even if it is the shell of a building struck in the country's unending wars, Zaher says, but their guardians are often disabled and cannot work.

WAR AND CORRUPTION

A study by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in 2008 found around 60,000 minors involved in child labour in Kabul alone.

Nader Nadery, a senior commissioner at the AIHRC, says it's a consequence of Afghanistan's decades of conflict. "In the last three to four years an increasing number of displaced from the war affected areas -- Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni -- have poured into Kabul city to seek refuge," he said.

A community of refugees mainly from Sangin in Helmand, where U.S. forces led an operation against insurgents last year, relies on Aschiana help in a Kabul slum quarter of plastic awnings.
In three decades of war the country's population has doubled to more than 30 million and the dusty mountain capital has swelled to a city of four million, much of it pot-holed and crumbling, with chronic traffic.

"Historically Kabul and Afghanistan have never had this crisis of people not having a ceiling or a roof. They're all poor but at least they had a home," Nadery said.

He says corruption, the subject of an ongoing diplomatic scuffle between Karzai and Washington and a major issue in parliamentary elections this month, makes a bad situation worse.

A United Nations report said in March that entrenched corruption was leaving the poor at the mercy of the powerful while security-obsessed foreign forces turn a blind eye.

"The direct link between poverty and corruption is always there," Nadery said. "Most development projects are halted or don't reach areas where it would affect the life of the poor because of the corruption involved."

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Deprivation and abuse pushes some teenagers to join the insurgents, she says. "The worst was children who the Taliban were forcing to go with them for an amount of money. They were from 7 to 18 years old, with guns and regular training."

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