This week the New York Times ran a beautifully written Rod Nordland ‘where are they now’ feature on wounded Afghan soldiers and cops, capturing the underappreciated entrepeneurial spirit of these brave souls. With photos by Bryan Denton, the piece captures the kind of veteran Americans used to be, suffering in silence, not worrying about what the government would do for them. While so many of our uniformed wounded today fling themselves on the mercy of organizations like Team RWB, these brave Afghans redefine the warrior ethos in unparalleled ways.
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.
Here’s where Nordland and I part intellectual company. Is selling your own flesh and blood really a “desperate” measure? I’d counter that this is the kind of “improvise, adapt, and overcome” attitude that makes the future of Afghanistan just a little brighter.
The universe loaned him the capital he would need to fund a better future, and he took that gift and ran with it. Any man willing to sell his daughter to get himself a leg won’t be beholden to his government, and it’s that kind of rugged spirit Afghanistan needs as it moves ahead into a Taliban-free future.
Fortunately, he’s not alone.
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.
Everyone does better when they’re part of a team, and Saheb’s part of a growing number of disabled veterans of the boundless struggle to free Afghanistan from the debilitating yoke of the Taliban. His innovative approach to funding his recovery isn’t nearly as groundbreaking as one of his compatriots, who started his own business when the government freed him of the burden of a pension.
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.
This is a nascent small business at its absolute best. If I were Fardeen, I wouldn’t want to be seen by my colleagues either. Otherwise they’d steal his idea and he’d face the kind of market competition that a fledgling self-supporting enterprise may not likely survive. And when you’re thinking long term about how you want to grow a crowd-sourced activity like his, that market sharing could result in the dilution of brand Fardeen.
Unfortunately, not all of his brothers in arms are ready to take that leap from the stifling arms of the government.
“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.
And as cops, Saheb and Fardeen have taken a bolder stand than some of their coddled army counterparts:
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 fiance broke it off at her family’s insistence, he said.
What Sgt. Barakazai doesn’t get is that the honor of being wounded in pursuit of Afghan dreams of independence from the Taliban with the unwavering support of his American partners is appreciation enough. There’s no parade waiting for US soldiers back from Afghanistan, either, and more than one has had his heart broken by a girl who couldn’t wait until he got back to get on with her life. And until we all get behind Pam Geller and fix creeping sharia, there’s no telling when an American veteran might have a grenade tossed through his window.
Underlying what’s happened to Fardeen and Saheb is the fruition of an American assistance policy that saw the wisdom in withdrawing combat support throughout 2014. The resultant surge in Afghan casualties was a testament to the bravery of Afghan soldiers and cops. Thanks to the steadfast efforts of their American advisers, they were more than prepared for the job at hand. And due to an innate tribal recklessness, they were soon being killed and wounded in numbers exponentially greater than their American counterparts.
What about the repeated pleas by senior Afghan military leaders for more air support? Or Ghani’s request that US troops stay even longer in the country? That’s a governemnt slow to adapt to the tough love of American backing.
[Tweet “Afghan vet amputees left standing on whatever’s left of their own two feet.”]At some point you have to take the training wheels off, and that point came toward the beginning of 2014, when Afghan forces became responsible for the country’s security. And their countrymen are doing their part every day to bridge that yawning gulf between civilians and the military. In 2015, more Afghan civilians are pitching themselves into the fray, getting killed and wounded in record numbers in solidarity with their countrymen in uniform.
Here’s to Saheb and Fardeen. To being forged in war’s crucible. Here’s to standing on whatever’s left of their own two feet. Because it’s this “ready or not” approach that’s the best of what the Americans have left behind. It’s a lesson we all have to learn: you might skin your knees, but that’s what it takes to ride with the big kids.
So pick yourself up if you can, wounded Afghan warrior, because gone are the days of worrying about your next welfare handout. Stand (or sit) up for yourself and dare to forge ahead as a can do wounded veteran who’s been blessed with at least one daughter who needs a man. Let’s get you a leg.