Wordless Wednesday: The Forgotten of Afghanistan

© Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

The young boy above might as well be the not-so metaphorical son of the refugee Steve McCurry made famous through the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. He is one of tens of thousands of refugees who've been forced to leave their homes in southern Afghanistan and seek safer havens in and around Kabul, mostly in refugee camps run by the United Nations. The UN reports that in the Panjwai district of Kandahar alone, some 10,000 families have been displaced. In many cases, those are repeat refugees--families that had fled the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1988) and the Afghan civil wars of the 1990s, settling in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran before being pressured to leave. They're the new nomads, their chronic, involuntary transience the unheard echo of a world of indifference.

The apparent defeat of the Taliban in 2001 encouraged many to return home. But Afghanistan was never really in control either of the central Afghan government or of NATO forces, as the recent upsurge in Taliban-led violence shows.

As The Times' Carlotta Gall reported earlier this month, the growing number of refugees reaching Kabul "are a sign of the deepening of the conflict between NATO and American forces and the Taliban in the south and of the feeling among the population that there will be no end soon. Families who fled the fighting around their homes in Helmand Province one or two years ago and sought temporary shelter around two southern provincial capitals, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, said they had moved to Kabul because of growing insecurity across the south."

To make matters worse, three women and and a man working with the International Rescue Committee, an international relief agency, were ambushed and killed as they were traveling to Kabul in Loag Province, in a vehicle clearly marked with the IRC's emblems. The victims were Mohammad Aimal, 25, of Kabul, who'd been working with the International Rescue Committee since 2002; Nicole Dial, 30, a dual citizen of Trinidad and the United States cordinating children's relief programs in Afghanistan since May; Jacqueline (Jackie) Kirk, 40, of Outrement, Quebec, a dual citizen of Canada and the United Kingdom, a New York-based adviser working for the IRC since 2004. As of this writing, the name of the fourth victim was being withheld pending her family's notification.

The IRC had been working in Afghanistan for 20 years. As of July, it had a staff of 531 Afghans and 11 expatriates there. "The IRC," the relief agency noted Wednesday, "has suspended operations in Afghanistan indefinitely."

That young boy in the picture has a dismal weight of immediate uncertainties to deal with, to say nothing of the future.

See Also:

• The Taliban Resurgent in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Afghanistan's Soap Operatic Chaos
• Afghanistan: Country Profile
• Return of Religious Repression in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
• Olympic Mystery: What Happened to Afghanistan's Mehboba Ahdyar?
• Wordless Wednesday Archive from About's News & Issues Channel