Internally displaced Afghan refugee children carry water in plastic
bottles after being filled at a communal pump in Rodat district of
Nangarhar province, Afghanistan.
NANGARHAR, 19 August 2013 (IRIN) - Six years ago, (click here) when Najib* was 15,
Taliban fighters came to his home in Shinwar District* in the eastern
province of Nangarhar telling him to join them. After repeated visits,
his family sought a way for Najib to escape, and paid a smuggler to take
him to the UK.
Six years on, he has just arrived back in his village, having been
deported from the UK, but the threats to get him to join the Taliban are
now greater than ever, he says.
“They’re not like the Taliban that were in the area before,” Najib told
IRIN. “They are all foreign fighters who have come from the mountains.
These guys will just kill you for no reason.”
Najib is not the only one on the move or considering his options:
Growing insecurity ahead of the pull-out of international forces is
driving thousands of Afghanistan’s children to seek new lives outside
the country....
The USA is great at bullets, bombs and training or so they say, but, USAID can't seem to find children most in need. That's interesting.
Iranian charity provides medical care to Afghan refugee children
(click here)
UNHCR - Wed, 14 Aug 2013 12:16 PM
UNHCR
TEHRAN,
14 August (UNHCR) - Ali was a two-year-old Afghan refugee when a
seemingly benign lump on his nose started growing at an alarming rate.
But thanks to a partnership between the UN refugee agency and the
Iranian medical charity MAHAK, his frightened father now expects to see
him grow up.
"At one point it was so big that it would
block his eye sight," his father said. Ali, sitting in his father's lap,
was drowsy after another chemotherapy treatment. "He has been enduring
chemo for more than four months and is now ready for radiotherapy. The
doctors are very optimistic."
Six months before, the
lump had suddenly started growing and a CT scan confirmed he had a
highly malignant cancerous tumor. UNHCR had earlier helped his father, a
typist with two other children, to obtain health Insurance cards for
his family but the ceiling would not cover the high costs of Ali's
treatment...
