Children make up the largest part of the country’s population. Based on statistics, nearly 43% of people in Afghanistan are under 15 years old. If access to education was possible, this great force would change the fate of Afghanistan in the near future.
At the current moment, children are one of the main victims of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and almost all of them are suffering from severe hunger. They are either completely deprived of education, or if they go to school, they don’t have enough teachers and books, and most of them are engaged in manual labor and begging after school.
International institutions and organizations sometimes publish reports on the condition of children and then announce financial assistance. The European Union has recently announced that it will contribute 40 million euros to implement the polio vaccine and support working children in Afghanistan. In the past, some institutions had provided such assistance. But these aid packages could cure the great suffering of the country’s children. A child who receives vaccination but does not have bread, his life will still be in danger. The one who receives both the vaccine and bread, but does not go to school, will still remain a victim. Earlier this year, it was predicted that 1.5 million children would die of starvation across Afghanistan. Death is not the only danger facing children. Those who survive, due to poverty and lack of educational facilities, do not receive the necessary physical and mental treatment, and receive puberty with diseases, bad education, and various physical and mental deficiencies, and become the owners of social and family responsibilities. This is how the cycle of poverty and violence continues. Today’s hungry children become tomorrow’s unemployed and disabled fathers and mothers.
Short-term projects and aid, if managed correctly, may save some. But most of the children will not be saved except by changing the situation, creating a national government and providing welfare. Children have special needs, but they do not live in a separate world from adults, and they cannot be prescribed medicine apart from that which leads to national salvation. How to end the hunger of children without changing the situation of the family? How can the children of soldiers, agents, and dependents of non-Taliban groups, who are oppressed now, be saved from deprivation without facilitating work opportunities for their fathers and mothers?
One of the disadvantages of project thinking is sticking to temporary solutions, not sustainable solutions. The trees of our country is in the control of the ax wielders, but influential institutions and governments are busy removing the soil from the leaves and counting the withered branches.
The greatest service to the children and other deprived segments of Afghanistan is to keep them away from cooperating with the Taliban and other forces and people engaged in anti-human acts. If you sign a cooperation agreement with bombers, opponents of education, and destroyers of roads, schools, and markets on one side, and give painkillers to the wounded, distribute books to the illiterate, and dry bread to the starving on the other side, it will not work. During the course of the years of war and jihad, this double policy has taken victims from our people. Several generations of Afghan children received biscuits and powdered milk to help them not die and grow up to carry guns and become cannon fodder.
The world’s silence in the face of the great calamity that has engulfed our homeland is clearly an anti-human behavior. As long as the presence of the anti-school, anti-freedom and anti-work force is tolerated in our country and the international community seeks to interact and compromise with it, there will be no hope of their assistance and announcements being effective.
