Afghanistan. No Country for Children

Afghanistan, the land of rocky terrain and mountains has been in the eye of a storm for a very long time now. First the Taliban, and then the U.S war had left the land barren and lifeless. And the worst sufferers were the children, innocent children who hardly understood what is going on. They faced the wrath of war in a very bad way.

There have been shocking incidents where afghan children were shot to death, sexually abused, wounded and injured. Humanity died a shameful death when children as young as five year old were tortured.

It is however a common trend of the western media to downplay these crimes and if somehow news breaks out, the rest of the media has to go out of their way to dig really deep in search of the truth.

Some of the tyranny that the Afghan children had to face was brutal and gross.

• On 27^th December 2009, during a raid by the US army children were dragged out, handcuffed, on the streets and shot to death. They were all school goers. This was a supposedly US-AFGHAN joint operation that reporter Jerome Starke had reported about, to have taken place in the ghazi kai village in the eastern Kunar provinces.
• A report said that since 2001 the last year was the deadliest, especially for the children in Afghanistan.
• Approximately 1050 children lost their lives in cross-fires, open bombings, suicide attacks and raids between the opponent parties says a human rights organization from Kabul.
• Afghanistan Rights Monitor claims that children have been killed tortured and sexually exploited by the U.S troops.
• Teenagers were involved in activities like bomb making and later on NATOS claimed that to be the justification behind mass killing of these teenagers.

This tyranny started when the Taliban insurgents took over. Children were denied basic and fundamental rights of education and health facilities. Not only this, they were sexually abused and even beaten up by these terrorist if they did not comply with them. Children were kidnapped from their houses and made to work at the camps as servants and face other dreadful oppression.

This continued with the U.S troops taking over. Children were illegally detained; minors raped and murdered on the streets, children shot to death became a regular event.

ARM director Ajmal Samadi claimed that in the year 2009 itself minimum three children had been killed every day. Around 2080 cases have been reported where child rights have been grossly violated. Thousands of young boys and girls have been denied their right to education.

Not only are the children being tortured in this way there has been cold opposition to life saving convoys. Human rights workers, AIDS workers and child immunization convoys were not allowed to reach the children.

When the government seems to have failed in acting correctly against this child massacre ARM has taken up the responsibility and are setting special funds for the affected children. The UN and the ICRC has also taken a step forward in sensitizing and educating the insurgents about child rights and protection during a crisis like a war.