Deutsche Welle visited two hospitals in war-torn Helmand region of Afghanistan
Editing, excerpting, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett
These are edited excerpts from Deutsche Welle’s findings.
Patients’ testimonies sound “painfully familiar.” Locations of incidents, the means of death or injuries (gunshot, IED, mortar attack) vary but the victims’ profile remains constant —
Civilian
Under 14 years old
Amputated limbs
From Doctors without Borders
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971 [http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/aboutus/?ref=main-menu].
16-year-old boy Sharifullah
Kids were running alongside the road. One was shot in the stomach during end-of-Ramadan celebrations. “Soldiers probably took [the kids] for a gang of Talibs and shot.” Four months earlier four children in his village were killed the same way.
16-year-old shepherd, Ihmatullah
He was hit by rocket shrapnel one night while he was sleeping outdoors. Ihmatullah from Musa Qala was “possibly injured by coalition fire.”
13-year old Abdulraziq from Farah province
He lost an eye and his right hand in the blast of an Improvised Explosive Device.
6-year-old Daudchan, 4-year-old Mahmadullah
Brothers: One brother lost his leg; the other lost both legs. “They were travelling with their father on a motorcycle when they had the misfortune of running over an IED.” The boys’ father “lost the toes of his right foot.”
It is often difficult to know just who is behind each attack in Helmand province. Together with American and British soldiers are also Estonians, Canadians, Danish, Georgians and Arabs from Bahrain fighting in Helmand. There are also the Taliban or drug smugglers or simply road bandits.
From Emergency
Emergency is an independent NGO, founded in Italy to provide high quality and free-of-charge health care to war and poverty victims. Emergency promotes a culture of solidarity, peace and respect for human rights. The work of Emergency around the world is possible thanks to the help of thousands of volunteers and supporters. Emergency is present also in UK, USA and Japan [http://www.emergency.it/who-we-are.html]. Emergency specializes in treating the war-wounded, specializing in victims of land mines.
15-year old shepherd, Ziacho
“I was walking my flock in Greshek (Helmand). I remember I sat down to rest when I spotted a mine nearby. I also saw a helicopter over me so I'm not sure what caused the explosion.” Ammunition rounds tore off both his legs.
12-year-old Mohamed
Mohamed was on the roof of his house when he noticed an impact on his body. “When they brought him to Emergency his liver was stuck onto his lungs.”
Musa Qala villager, Abdulwahid
“I was working in my farm when the battle began… The fighting lasted between one and two hours. In the end, I felt a sharp pain in my chest and leg. I couldn't tell where the shot came from.” He lost his leg in the middle of the crossfire.
12-year-old Quadratullah
“Back in my village we spotted some people getting into an empty house. We were most curious so we decided to see what was inside … I went first but I had to push the door hard because it was blocked. Then something exploded...When I woke up here, my father told me it happened to be a warehouse where the Taliban stored their weapons and explosives.”
…What kind of life awaits a kid from Afghanistan who has lost his right eye and arm, and both his legs, in a seemingly endless war?Afghanistan’s children
Around 90 percent of the patients admitted to hospital in the war are civilians. According to Emergency hospital’s Matteo Dell'Aira, 40 percent of the patients are children.
A UN report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, released in the summer of 2010, showed civilian deaths and injuries in the country had increased by 31 percent from a year earlier— to 3,268.
Civilian casualties and deaths continue to rise in Afghanistan, despite a NATO commitment to avoid them.
Sources and notes
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) “relies solely on private funds and, unlike many other groups, does not have paid soldiers protecting the safety of its staff. Even the usual barbed wire and sandbags are not to be found at the camp where MSF staff lodges. ‘We try not to be in the same place as foreign troops. Nonetheless, our best calling card is our work … We have earned the respect of local people because everybody knows what we are all about.”
Boost Hospital
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) resumed its work in Afghanistan after an absence of five years, following the murder of five of its staff in Badghis province in 2004. Their humanitarian mission in Lashkar Gah supporting Boost hospital was launched in November 2009. Boost is one of the two reference hospitals in the war-torn south of the country, alongside the one in Kandahar. A reference hospital is the term used by the World Health Organization for hospitals that accept complex cases for cutting-edge diagnosis and treatment.
At Boost, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is primarily responsible for pediatrics and maternity and handles many cases of “malnutrition in infants after drinking cow or goat milk. [Infants’] mothers are anemic and can’t breast-feed, so the children suffer from chronic gastroenteritis because they are unable to process the animal milk.’”
Emergency
The Emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah has been in operation since 2004 and is the third one the Milan-based NGO runs in Afghanistan. The other two are in the northern districts of Panjshir and Kabul, open since 1999 and 2001 respectively.
Matteo Dell’Aira, the local medical coordinator of Emergency and eight other colleagues, both Italian and Afghan, were arrested in April by a mixed group of Afghan police and British troops. The nine doctors were accused of participating in a plot to assassinate Helmand’s governor, Gulab Mangal.
Police claimed Matteo Dell’Aira and Emergency colleagues “‘were handing information to the Taliban and that they had even found weapons and explosives in one of our warehouses at the hospital.’
“The arrest came under the aegis of Operation Moshtarak (‘together’ in the Afghan Dari language) which was one of innumerable ISAF military offensives in the region. Emergency complained that they were denied the establishment of a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the wounded from Marjah, a nearby village which was heavily shelled for months. Finally, the detainees were released after nine days in jail without charges. Immediately afterward, Gino Strada, who founded Emergency, said that the attempt to discredit his organization had failed. He said Emergency in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand province, was ‘an uncomfortable witness to what the Coalition forces are doing here.’”
Deutsche Welle’s news article
“Hospitals in Helmand hot zone treat more ‘collateral’ patients — A visit to the two hospitals in the war-torn Helmand region of Afghanistan exposes the horrors that innocent civilians, so-called collateral damage caught in the crossfire, experience in modern wartime,” (author Karlos Zurutuza, editor Jennifer Abramsohn), December 13, 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6299162,00.html
Legacy of War — The Vietnam War ended 35 years ago
Around 16,000 children from Da Nang, where the U.S. military was based, have suffered genetic damage from exposure to the toxic chemical Agent Orange.
The winner of UNICEF Photo of the Year for 2010 was U.S. photographer Ed Kashi with his picture of a nine-year-old girl from Vietnam. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,1429,00.html
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