Civilians bear brunt of Afghan fight

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Kabul

Life is difficult for families who lose their bread-winners

Ahmed Shaw - his wizened face creased by worry - should have been enjoying his retirement but a bomb blast changed all that.

His son, Abdul Wakeel, was killed in September and now Ahmed is rebuilding the family shop, which was also destroyed in the explosion.

The shop hires out chairs, forks and knives to wedding parties.

Ahmed says he has got no choice if his son's children are to have any kind of a future.

"I'm rebuilding the shop so the children will have work and they can feed the rest of the family," he says, surrounded by spades and wheelbarrows.

"I borrowed the money from friends and family. I needed to do this otherwise the children would have been forced onto the streets to beg."

One of Ahmed grandson's, Zakria, nine, says that he wants to work in the shop to show that his father had brave children.

There is a lot of coverage of soldiers' deaths in Afghanistan but it is civilians who are bearing the brunt of this conflict.

In Afghanistan families depend upon a single bread-winner and if they lose him, then it's a catastrophe Akmal Dawi

According to the UN, more than a 1,000 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year.

The majority of them were killed in insurgent attacks often aimed at coalition forces.

But while each loss is a tragedy, what Afghan families fear most is losing their male wage-earner.

There is a fine line between relative prosperity and the plunge into poverty.

Burden of bread-winners

"In Afghanistan families depend upon a single bread-winner and if they lose him than it's a catastrophe," says Akmal Dawi, a local journalist covering humanitarian affairs.

Akmal's father died during the violence when he was young, forcing Akmal's mother to go out and work, so he could get an education.

Adela and her family say they once had a good life

Akmal says that many Afghans have developed coping mechanisms in the face of constant conflict.

"If they lose a bread-winner families need to sacrifice something," he says.

"Children's education may be the first to be sacrificed or females are forced to go out and beg. Sometimes elderly people also need to take on a huge amount of responsibility."

Families can sometimes be entitled to a small amount of compensation if their relatives are killed in the violence from either the Afghan government or international forces, if foreign troops are involved in the incident.

But paperwork and corrupt Afghan officials often puts paid to that, leaving most to fend for themselves.

Adela knows. Her husband was killed in a suicide bomb blast seven years ago.

"My family once had a good life," says Adela, 25, standing in a dusty courtyard in a mud-brick house.

She used to stay at home and look after her three children.

But now Adela ekes out a living - baking bread for neighbours in a run-down part of town.

As a woman, it is almost impossible for Adela to get a decent job.

Her kids go to school and Adela hopes they will do better than her in the future.

But life in Afghanistan is unpredictable and death of a husband, a son, a bread-winner, can change a family's future in an instant.