Sgt. Nick Graham, a medic, treats 4-year-oid Nasibullah's infected foot Tuesday after the boy's father, Asadllah, brought him to the village of
Zamkhel, Afghanistan. "We could use an entire hospital hero," Graham said after surveying how much medical carte is needed.

U.S. PARATROOPERS. ACCOMPANIED BY MEDICS. TRY TO HELP

Where Taliban still rule, kids suffer
by C. J.. Chivers, The New York Times

In an isolated region of Afghanistan, the Taliban rule. They restrict outside medical care, leaving kids blinded and disfigured.

   KARAWADfN, AFGHANISTAN - The Afghan boy crouched near a wall in this remote village, where the Taliban's strength has prevented the government from providing services. His eyes were coated by an opaque yellow sheath.
   Sgt. Nick Graham, an American Army medic, approached. The villagers crowded around. They said the boy's name was Hayatullah. He was 10 years old and developed the eye disease six years ago. "Can you help him?" a man asked.
   Graham examined the boy. He was blind. There was nothing the medic could do.
   A second man appeared, pushing a wheelbarrow that held a hunched child with purplish lips and twisted feet, problems associated with severe congenital heart disease. Graham listened to his heart Without surgery, he said, this boy would probably die.
   A third man turned the corner from an alley, leading Baratbibi by the arm. She was 7 years old. She turned her ruined eyes toward the afternoon sun without blinking. They were more heavily coated than Hayatullah's. Graham sighed.
   "We could use an entire hospital here," he said.
   Throughout early December a company of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division patrolled the Nawa district of Ghazni province, an isolated region near Pakistan where the Taliban operate with confidence and the Afghan government's presence is almost nonexistent.
   Each patrol was a foray into villages regarded as Taliban sanctuaries. Each began with tension and the possibility of violence. But the Taliban did not confront the heavily armed paratroopers, and within minutes the mood of the patrols shifted.
   Once the villagers realized that the platoons were accompanied by medics, they pushed forward sick children and pleaded for help.

   A catalog of pediatric suffering quickly formed into queues: children with grotesque burns and skin infections, distended scrapes and scorpion and spider bites, bleeding ears, dimmed eyes or heavy, rolling coughs. Some were bandaged in dirty rags. Others were in wheelbarrows because they lacked the strength to walk.
   In one village, Zarinkhel, the villagers begged Capt. Christopher DeMure, the commander of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry, for vaccines.  Seven children had died of measles in the last three days, they said, including two the morning the patrol arrived.
   Afghanistan remains hobbled by underdevelopment, poverty and illiteracy, a legacy of decades of war. But the problems in areas like these villages, the residents said, have been aggravated by the continuing insurgency and the harsh edicts of the Taliban, whose rule survived in such remote places even after it lost control of Kabul, the Afghan capital, late in 2001.
   The Nawa district lies on a transit route for insurgents who travel between Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Taliban exist openly here. To limit the influence of the government, the villagers and the Afghan and American authorities said, the insurgents have sacked schools, scared off private contractors and sharply restricted medical care.
   "The Taliban has made it abundantly clear that no outside doctors, no outside medical help, can work in this district," DeMure said.
   Before late 2001, a few international aid organizations worked in the area with the Taliban's consent They dug wells, built clinics, distributed small amounts of aid and administered vaccines. Now few outsiders venture here; the area is considered too dangerous/
   On one patrol, in Salamkhel, 1st Lt Brian Etching asked the villagers to meet at a mosque and discuss their problems. He suspected that many villagers supported the Taliban, and he wanted to tell them that their choices were counterproductive.
   Rahmatullah, 35, said that the Taliban were here because the Afghan government was weak, and that the villagers were afraid. Whenever the military or the government distributed aid, he said, including blankets or winter clothes, die Taliban collected the aid and set it on fire.
   "We would like to support the coalition forces, but if we do that the Taliban will come at night and cut off our heads," Rahmatullah said.

[The News Tribune Tacoma, WA 12 Dec 2007, Wed, Page A2]