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November 5, 2001
David
Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI)
Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
October 30, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
War on Terror
Bad as War on Drugs
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flying
Blind:
The Predator's Problem
Ali Abunimah
Dear Colin
Powell
St. Clair/Cockburn
Atomic
Trains Grounded
Maud Hurd
We Need a Real
Stimulus Package
Dr. Susan
Block
We're
All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
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bin Laden
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
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November 5,
2001
Inside
Afghanistan
Life in the Minefields
By Patrick Cockburn
in Faizabad
The Independent
We had just driven through the village of Jorm,
a huddle of mud-brick houses surrounded by trees in an upland
valley in northern Afghanistan, when we saw about fifty people
running towards us in a sort of bewildered panic.
As they grew closer we saw that two of
them were carrying children, their faces covered in blood, on
their backs. We stopped and asked a man beside the road what
had happened and he said a mine had exploded one of the
thousands of devices that litter this land after two decades
of war.
Just outside the village people, almost
all men, were milling about in ineffective confusion. Even in
this emergency Afghan women did not leave their houses, apart
from one old woman who was cradling a boy's head in her lap.
She was wailing and rocking to and fro, but she had not even
wiped the blood off his face.
We found that three small boys, not just
the two we had originally seen, were injured. One of them, Barot
Mohammed, aged 10, lay on the stony ground, bleeding heavily
from wounds in his right leg where pieces of flesh had been
torn away by the blast. His left hand was wrapped in a sodden
brown bandage, but whatever it covered looked too small to be
a fist. The boys were so drenched in blood that I could not
see how badly they were wounded. One of them was half sitting
up, clutching his stomach. None of the men, some armed with
sub-machine-guns, seemed to know what to do.
Through our driver, Daoud, whose knowledge
of English is limited to about twenty words, we asked where
was the nearest hospital. They replied that it was in Baharak,
a market town about an hour's drive away, but they had no car
or truck.
I was with two other correspondents,
one from France and the other from Spain, with whom I had driven
in a sturdy Russian-made jeep through the mountains from the
Panjshir valley north of Kabul. None of us knew much about first
aid, or had any bandages, but it seemed possible that, unless
the boys received help soon, they would bleed to death.
My two colleagues volunteered to stay
behind in Jorm to make room for the children in the small jeep.
We lifted them in, wrapped in blankets. None of the three cried
out or made any sound other than a whimper, either because they
were in shock or because Afghan boys are expected to endure
pain without complaint.
Two older men also crammed themselves
into the jeep. One, with a grey beard, was the boy's uncle.
He said the boys were brothers. Barot Mohammed was the oldest
and the other two were called Rajab Mohammed, 7, whom I had
seen clasping his stomach, and Najmaddin, 5, who did not seem
quite so badly hurt.
It was a horribly bumpy ride to Baharak.
Daoud is a highly skilful driver and the dirt road, by Afghan
standards, not too bad. But even so the boys were jolted up
and down as he nursed the jeep across deep gullies where streams
cut across the road. Rajab's eyes, deep-set and very dark those
of like most Afghans, kept closing and his head falling sideways,
so I thought he was dying.
The hospital in Baharak, a typical dusty
market town, represented the best hope of safety for the boys.
There were no lights inside. I walked through several rooms
shouting for a doctor. I saw two women in the distance and explained
about the mine explosion. They clucked sympathetically, but did
nothing, presumably because they were not wearing veils. Finally
a man appeared who said he was an assistant doctor. In a cluttered
room with two operating tables he began to treat Najmaddin.
Another doctor called Dr Suleiman arrived
and a German nurse called Mathias, an energetic looking man
with long brown hair, offered to come and help.
With three doctors and nurses treating
the boys I became more hopeful. When I asked the assistant doctor
how they were he said "good, good" in an absent way.
He and Mathias were working on Barot's right arm, which had
deep cuts in it. But when they gently removed the blood-sodden
bandage on his left hand, I saw that only the little finger
was left.
Barot must have been holding the mine
or shell in this hand when it exploded. It had ripped away four
fingers, leaving white tips of bone sticking out of the flesh.
"I'm afraid we'll have to cut away the whole hand,"
said Mathias, sadly shaking his head.
A little later Dr Suleiman revealed that
Rajab had a puncture wound in the abdomen. He said both boys
would have to go for surgery to a proper hospital two hours'
drive away in the large town of Faizabad. As we left, Dr Suleiman
was saying he would look in the bazaar for somebody with a car.
CP
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