Maimed Defending Afghanistan, Then Neglected
After years of war, many Afghan soldiers and policemen were grievously injured. But the pensions and health care they receive are often insufficient. By Jon Gerberg and Ben Laffin on Publish DateMay 2, 2015.
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Saheb had a problem: His left leg had been blown off by a Taliban bomb and he could not afford a prosthesis. He also had a solution: His 11-year-old daughter, Noor Bibi, whom he sold last year for $3,000 to pay for a new leg. Saheb is among the tens of thousands of soldiers and policemen who have been wounded fighting for the government in the country’s long-running civil war. Faced with inadequate or nonexistent official support, many are resorting to desperate measures to survive.
Others who are getting support find themselves on the margins of a society that treats people with disabilities as outcasts.
In a war with a fatality rate that rises each year, the number of those who survive attacks but are disabled permanently is soaring as well, overwhelming the resources available from the Afghan government and charitable organizations. Even by the most conservative estimate, Afghanistan has 130,000 disabled people who had served in the police or other security forces, 40,000 of whom had amputations, according to government figures for those receiving pensions. The total is almost certainly much higher because the government releases no figures on disabled former members of the regular military.
CreditBryan Denton for The New York Times
Many, like Fardeen, 24, a former police sergeant who lost his right leg below the knee to a Taliban bomb in 2013, which also destroyed his left ankle and foot, do not get even the meager pensions to which they are entitled.
Fardeen, who like many Afghans uses one name, instead waits until dark and then rolls his wheelchair into the heavy evening traffic in the Macrorayan neighborhood of Kabul to beg — while praying that none of his former colleagues see him.
“Sometimes I hear the girls in the cars saying, ‘Look at that handsome young man. Why is he begging in the street?’ ” he said, sitting with a blanket over his legs. “They don’t see what’s down there.”
The scope of the problem is daunting. In just one fighting season here in the southern province of Helmand last year, a single Afghan police battalion, the 2nd Police Battalion in Sangin, had 154 men disabled by their wounds — out of 344 in all, according to Dr. Abdul Hamidi, head of the Helmand Police Clinic. “This year is worse than all previous years; it’s really bad,” Dr. Hamidi said in December.
Most of the seriously wounded men come to the Emergency Hospital here, run by an international aid group based in Italy. Many of the wounded expressed anger with what they said was a lack of help from the central authorities.
“The government is only a government in name — they will not give me anything,” said Mohammad Qassim, 28, who lost his right leg in a bombing in Marja, where he was an officer with the Afghan Local Police, a militia nominally under the command of the central government. Both his brothers are also militia members who have received nothing from the government after being wounded. “With the Taliban, if one Talib dies they give 15,000 afghanis to the family a month for two years. Our government is weaker than the Taliban.” That pension would be about $275 a month.
Members of the Afghan National Police or army who are disabled are supposed to get a pension equal to their last salary for life. Survivors of those who are killed should get the same pension. But a combination of corruption, mismanagement and daunting bureaucracy keeps many from getting paid.
Officers with the Afghan Local Police, who are paid by the government for fighting, get nothing when they are wounded, even though they have a disproportionately high share of casualties in places like Helmand, where fighting is intense.
That is why Saheb, who also has one name, found himself so desperate. An Afghan Local Police commander in Paktika Province, Saheb was wounded when his vehicle hit a land mine while in pursuit of Taliban fighters. Months after his injury, he had stopped receiving his salary and he was not entitled to a pension.
In Kabul and at six other locations around the country, the International Committee of the Red Cross runs rehabilitation centers that fit prostheses for free, teach patients how to walk again and provide job training. But Saheb could not afford transportation to go to the nearest center, in Kabul, and to stay there for the months of therapy he would need once he got a prosthesis.
“It was a very sad moment for me,” he said. “And it was a very sad moment for her as well,” he added, referring to his daughter, Noor Bibi. The girl was unhappy about being sold for marriage, he said, but “in Pashtun society, when the father wants something, the daughter has to give it, even if she is not happy.”
Saheb was not happy either. “Selling my daughter was worse than losing my leg,” he said. After getting his new leg in Kabul, Saheb returned to his village in Paktika Province, where he remains jobless.
Alberto Cairo, who runs the orthopedic rehabilitation program for the Red Cross, said there were plenty of facilities to help Afghanistan’s wounded with rehabilitation. But what is more difficult, he said, is helping people survive in communities where wheelchair ramps and other accommodations are unknown or impractical, and where they often find themselves shunned.
Fardeen, the former police officer, says that is what befell him. His wife took their two children and left, and his father threw him out of his house. He burst into tears telling his story. “I live in a hell of difficulties,” he said.
Officials at the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyred and Disabled said they had no record he had ever applied for his pension. Fardeen said that he had, but had never received the money.
It is a common complaint, and the Afghan government’s chronic financial problems over the past year have meant that payments are often late and the processing of applications is slow. Disabled officers from the national police and soldiers with the regular army should receive a 100 percent pension, and qualify for preferential treatment for scholarships and other benefits. But even those who qualify often complain of random and missing payments.
Regular Afghan National Army soldiers tend to fare better than the police, and unpaid pensions are less of a problem for them. The treatment they get at the country’s main military hospital in Kabul is far better than policemen can hope to find in ordinary hospitals. An entire ward is set aside for those who have had recent amputations. Soldiers there praised their medical treatment, but many said they felt neglected by the society they served.
“There’s no sense of appreciation in Afghanistan for what we have done and the sacrifices we have made,” said Sgt. Hashmatullah Barakzai, 26, a special forces soldier who was attacked while on leave by an insurgent who threw a grenade into his home, costing him his right leg. He was engaged when that happened; his fiancée broke it off at her family’s insistence, he said.
The police and soldiers, as bad as their problems are, represent only a small portion of Afghanistan’s disabled population. Nearly four decades of war have left an estimated 3 million people disabled, said Abdul Khaliq Zazai, executive director of Accessibility Organization for Afghan Disabled. The figures include mental and physical disabilities, and encompass both civilians and security forces.
Civilian victims are entitled to government pensions of just $100 a month. Those who receive them are only a fraction of the total; nearly 300,000 such pensions are being disbursed.
Many Afghans have disabilities that are not immediately visible, Mr. Zazai said, citing severe mental problems from trauma. One woman had severe burns, he said, and was ashamed to show anyone her wounds. “There are many such cases.”
Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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