Afghan Children

A white van pulled up to a concrete fountain on a leafy side street in downtown Kabul, trailed by shrieking Afghan children. "Ollie! Ollie!" they shouted, pounding on the vehicle. Oliver Percovich, a lanky Australian in a black T-shirt, emerged from the van with a load of banged-up skateboards. The children grabbed the boards and raced off to skate in the cracked bowl of the dried-up fountain.

The aid organization Save the Children released its annual State of the World's Mothers report Tuesday. Once again, conditions for moms in the U.S. trailed that of many other developed nations. The country's position climbed six places to 25 th , sandwiched between Belarus and the Czech Republic.  Save the Children's 2012 rankings compare 165 countries - 122 in the developing world - examining maternal health, education and economic status alongside the health and nutrition of children.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander of Western forces in Afghanistan, apologized Wednesday for the accidental deaths of nine civilians, identified by Afghan officials as children killed as they gathered firewood in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan. A 10th child was injured in the bombardment, Afghan officials said. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization force's unusually swift acceptance of responsibility for Tuesday's deaths in Kunar province followed a highly public burst of outrage by Afghan officials.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander of Western forces in Afghanistan, apologized Wednesday for the accidental deaths of nine civilians, identified by Afghan officials as children killed as they gathered firewood in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan. A 10th child was injured in the bombardment, Afghan officials said. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization force's unusually swift acceptance of responsibility for Tuesday's deaths in Kunar province followed a highly public burst of outrage by Afghan officials.

A U.S. Air Force cargo jet filled with parcels of winter clothes, toys and candy landed in Turkmenistan on Monday, the first shipment of aid purchased by American children for boys and girls in Afghanistan. Millions of Afghans are facing the threat of famine and disease because of years of drought and civil war. The aid packages are designed to help them through the winter and give them hope.

Mazar Uddin is a 6-year-old with a head of dusty hair who was deposited at the Alla Auddin Orphanage more than a year ago. His mother, a young widow, left him at the rundown compound in the war-ravaged Afghan capital because she could no longer afford to keep her four sons, especially those who couldn't work. Uddin, the youngest, was the first to go. Alla Auddin is the only refuge for children in Kabul.

In the closing remarks of his East Room news conference Thursday night, President Bush announced the formation of "America's Fund for Afghan Children," inviting every American child to contribute $1 to the new relief effort. The idea for the fund was Bush's, according to Karen Hughes, the president's counselor.

His name, Shirin, means "sweetie." He is about 3 years old and weighs less than 6 1/2 pounds. He lies, with flies crawling around his eyes, in a room with mud floors and walls in mountainous Afghanistan, and the local doctor says he will die soon of hunger. But there is no money here. In fact, his family is in debt for what to its members seems a large sum: 50 cents. He lolls on a rough wool blanket like a small baby, his tiny fists clenched, his legs curled up, and he starts to cry.

The aid organization Save the Children released its annual State of the World's Mothers report Tuesday. Once again, conditions for moms in the U.S. trailed that of many other developed nations. The country's position climbed six places to 25 th , sandwiched between Belarus and the Czech Republic.  Save the Children's 2012 rankings compare 165 countries - 122 in the developing world - examining maternal health, education and economic status alongside the health and nutrition of children.

With bake sales, lemonade stands and broken piggy banks, American children have raised more than $1.5 million to help provide warmth and comfort to the children of Afghanistan, President Bush said Saturday as he surveyed boxes of coats, candy, socks and crayons that will be dispatched overseas today. "We have given the Afghan children something to smile about, because America's children are generous and kind and compassionate," Bush told about 100 workers and children at a New Windsor, Md.

Scattered violence ranging from airstrikes to roadside bombings killed at least 21 people over a 48-hour span, including U.S. troops, Afghan children and members of the Afghan security forces, officials said Saturday. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has failed to provide a respite from the deaths and injuries of civilians and soldiers across Afghanistan, although U.S. military fatalities are climbing at a slower rate this month than in July, the deadliest month of the war for American forces.

A white van pulled up to a concrete fountain on a leafy side street in downtown Kabul, trailed by shrieking Afghan children. "Ollie! Ollie!" they shouted, pounding on the vehicle. Oliver Percovich, a lanky Australian in a black T-shirt, emerged from the van with a load of banged-up skateboards. The children grabbed the boards and raced off to skate in the cracked bowl of the dried-up fountain.

U.S. troops were not responsible for the deaths of six children killed in an attack on a suspected Taliban hide-out, an Afghan official said Wednesday. The children and two adults were crushed to death Friday during a mission against a large arms cache in Paktia province controlled by local Taliban commander Mullah Jalani, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bryan Hilferty told reporters Wednesday. It was the second time in as many days that children were reported killed in U.S. assaults.

Reeka doesn't talk much. She has no shoes or socks, and her tiny toes are like ice. At 5, she has spent much of her life in the Kabul orphanage. "My father told me, 'Don't use your shoes,' " Reeka said in a squeaky whisper, her voice muffled by a hand that hid her mouth as she spoke. She has long since outgrown the shoes she arrived with three years ago.

Khair Muhammad, who says he's 10 -- "maybe" -- sits on the floor working amid the noise and toxic smells of a workshop at the Sherzad Plastic Factory. He expertly cuts excess material from molded water pitchers with a small knife held by equally small hands stained red by dye. For his 10 1/2 hours of labor, Khair will earn 13,000 Afghanis -- about 20 cents. His six-day week will bring in $1.20. But that sum will help support his family of eight, struggling to survive because the children's father is too old to work.

They walk arm and arm, barefoot down gravel roads, giggling at having their picture taken. They frolic in canals to cool themselves in the midday sun. Their playgrounds are abandoned Soviet military vehicles. They are the children of Kandahar. This southern Afghanistan city of 500,000 people was the heartland of the fallen Taliban regime. It was shrouded in oppressive social rules until the hard-line Islamic militia was driven from power in December.

I was very touched to see our world leaders exchanging air time on New Year's Day. It all seemed so beautiful on the surface. To see Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and hear his desires for better understanding between our two countries filled me with hope until I remembered that this is the same man who sanctions placing mines in toys to be found and played with by Afghan children, thereby maiming and crippling them. I was very saddened when I remembered. I cried for the innocent children whose hands and faces have been blown away.

Perhaps the witty and urbane Gorbachev would tell the world why there is a factory in his country that manufactures small brightly colored bombs shaped like toys, which are taken to Afghanistan and dropped from helicopters into villages where they blow up in the hands of children. Or maybe with "telling humor" Gorbachev could put into perspective for us the planned genocide that has killed more than 2 million Afghans and driven more than 30% of the entire population from their homes.

In the dank stairwell of apartment block 2 in the suburban Kabul neighborhood of Blakhay Qasaba Kargari, you are transported a world away: This soulless concrete box could be in Moscow, or any other Russian city. Eight flights up, a Russian woman named Galina Margoyeva, 35, yearns for just such a place. Anywhere in Russia. She came more than 14 years ago from the Soviet Union, when its war to occupy Afghanistan was coming to its failed conclusion.

A donation drive Saturday will collect school supplies for children in Afghanistan. The supplies most needed are pens, pencils, crayons, notebooks, chalkboards and chalk, textbooks and reference materials, backpacks and calculators, said officials of the Afghanistan Relief Organization. Telephones, computers and fax machines are also being collected. Receipts for the donations will be available. The supplies will be collected from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at InStorage, 17071 Imperial Highway.