The Dead Afghan’s Tale: How Afghanistan’s Poorest Bear the Brunt of the War

[rug]

Abdul Basit, left, and his older brother Abdul Sabir in front of their father's grave in Takhar province, Afghanistan

By Mujib Mashal / Dasht-e-Qala, Afghanistan Aug. 12, 2013

The young boy does not say a word. His eyes water as he turns away, staring out the window or at the mud walls of his family home in Dasht-e-Qala, in Afghanistan’s northern Takhar province. Just across the river and over the hills lie Tajikistan and the vast expanse of Central Asia.

Abdul Basit has seen what no 7-year-old should see. He saw the dead body of his father Yoldash, an Afghan police officer, who was chopped up into six pieces by the Taliban and left to rot in the sun for nearly 30 days in western Farah province. The Afghan government did not even send a search or rescue mission for him. When Basit and his uncle Gul-Murad finally arrived to pick up the corpse, Yoldash’s two hands and half of his torso were missing.

Though the manner of his death is particularly brutal, Yoldash’s story is not uncommon among the Afghan security forces, which, as of June, have taken full lead of the country’s security ahead of the U.S. and its international coalition’s 2014 drawdown. Families of many Afghan security personnel who have fallen in the line of duty report neglect by the political leadership in Kabul. On average, 10 Afghan soldiers are killed every 24 hours in Afghanistan, and there is a high attrition rate, with many deserting the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces.

There is no clear data documenting Kabul’s neglect of those slain, but Afghan government officials admit in private that it risks becoming a bigger problem. The anecdotes are legion. Families of dead soldiers, who come from some of the poorest communities in one of the world’s most impoverished countries, usually have to collect their own dead, often at enormous expense. This systemic disregard for the dead not only impacts the morale of a force Washington has pinned its exit hopes on, but also underscores the growing divide between Afghanistan’s struggling, suffering rank and file and political elites increasingly inured from the realities of the battlefield.

http://world.time.com/2013/08/12/the-dead-afghans-tale-how-afghanistans-poorest-are-bearing-the-brunt-of-the-war/

[msongs]

1. and how america's poor and middle class bear the brunt of paying for it nt

[rug]

2. I suspect we have much more in common with these kids that with those financing the war.

[Catherina]

3. +1. Beat me to it. Like the poor everywhere n/t