Girl's Death Devastates Family

One month after an attack by a suicide bomber killed an American woman and a 13-year -old Afghan girl, the crowds are slowly returning to Chicken Street, a normally busy shopping area in the centre of town.

As the well-off Afghans, foreign workers and tourists who normally shop there trickle back to its many antique, carpet and gift shops, the children who do a hard sell with books, maps, newspapers, and magazines have followed.

But life has changed forever for the family of Feriba, the young girl who was killed in the attack. The third-grader, who attended the Rahman Mina girl's school in the morning and hawked English-language publications on the street in the afternoon, was the primary means of support for her four younger siblings, her mother, ailing grandfather and aunt.

Her death on October 23 was the first fatality for a family that had managed to survive more than two decades of war.

"She was not like [the typical] female member of the family,” moaned Feriba’s mother, Laila, as she pointed to a picture of her daughter selling newspapers. “She was providing food for all eight members of the family sufficiently."

There had been on-and-off warnings by Afghan officials, the United Nations mission, diplomatic missions, and various non-governmental organisations about the potential dangers of shopping on Chicken Street.

Laila recounted how Feriba had left her home a little early that October day expecting to make enough money to buy food for a special Ramadan evening dinner at which her grandmother would be a guest.

"She told me, 'Mother, don’t bother yourself today. I will bring you bread and other things for this evening’s dinner’,” recalled Laila. “Before the explosion, she had already received 10 US dollars from a foreigner for a book she sold."

The suicide bomber had strapped hand grenades to his waist, and detonated them after he approached a four-wheel-drive vehicle marked with the insignia of ISAF – the International Security and Assistance Force - according to Samiullah, a carpet-shop owner who witnessed the incident.

"A bearded man dressed like a beggar approached a group of uniformed peacekeepers and blew himself up with grenades near my shop,” he said. “The bookseller girl [Feriba] had come here earlier on to try to sell books to the foreigners."

Almost all the shopkeepers on Chicken Street knew the thin girl of medium height who usually sold her books to foreigners said her cousin, who sold magazines on the street.

Mohammad Yousuf Wahib, who represents shop owners on Chicken Street, said Feriba’s main customers were foreigners, especially the ISAF military. And the soldiers loved her, he said.

Some of the ISAF soldiers came to visit the family and express their sorrow at her death.

Afghan intelligence officials this month named the attacker as Matiullah, at one time a member of a militant faction led by Maulavi Younis Khalis, who later joined the Taliban movement.

According to officials, Matiullah left his home in the Shamshatu Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar to carry out the attack, which also killed an American woman and injured three Icelandic ISAF soldiers.

Feriba's father, Talibshah Khaksar, indirectly blamed his daughter’s death on the government, and called for the prosecution of an additional three people whom he said were arrested in connection just after the attack.

"Why doesn’t the government disclose the names of those responsible for the attack? They should be executed in public despite the fact that the person directly responsible has passed away,” Talibshah told IWPR.

Talibshah, 40, who had been working in Iran for a couple of years, said he returned home four days after the death of his daughter. His wife, Laila, said he had been sending money home to the family, but what little he earned was not enough to meet daily household expenses.

He has since opened a small wooden roadside kiosk near the family home in the dusty southeastern Kabul suburb where his family lives.

“If the government hadn’t dismiss me during its downsizing programme at the defence ministry in 2002, I wouldn’t have been forced to go to Iran and leave my daughter to sell books here. This tragedy happened to me... after 20 years of service in the defence ministry.”

An aircraft technician until he was sacked, Talibshah acknowledged that the government provided his family with 2,200 dollars after Feriba’s death, he said the amount wasn’t even enough for the funeral ceremonies.

He’s angry at President Hamed Karzai for refusing to see him.

"I wanted to meet Karzai as the father of a sacrificed girl, and as a pained and troubled person who has suffered every hardship during his government, but he hasn’t expressed sympathy, at least not to me,” he said. “ Foreigners are better and have more sympathy than our president and [government] people as they, ISAF soldiers among them, have come to my home frequently and shared their sorrow with us. Why doesn’t he hear our voices and feel our pain?"

He vowed he’d never let his other children be vendors like Feriba.

Feriba was not the first Afghan child to become a victim of an attack aimed at foreigners.

At least one child was killed in a car bomb explosion in the centre of Kabul in late August. The bombing targeted DynCorp, an American security contractor providing guards for Karzai and training for the Afghan National Army.

But despite the dangers, child vendors continue to ply their trade in order to help their families survive. It’s a competitive business. They swarm the foreigners they find strolling Kabul’s main shopping streets or entering and leaving tourist hotels and guesthouses.

Many destitute Kabul families send their children to the streets as vendors. Most of these children don’t go to school because alleviating the family’s poverty is priority number one. Feriba was fortunate to be able to do both.

Rohullah, 10, who sells maps and stationery on Chicken Street, said he was not scared of working there. He said the money he earns from foreigners is too important.

Rohullah's father was killed during the civil war in 1995 and he is trying to earn a living along with his elder brother, a janitor at Kabul's main police station.

"I fear nothing. I need to provide food for my family; otherwise we will die of hunger," said Sima Gul, 12, who sells plastic sunglasses.

Mohammad Yousuf, head of the Ashiana training and education centre for children in Kabul, said the kids working on the streets are the most vulnerable in attacks aimed at foreigners.

"The children may not indicate their fear, but such incidents can have a psychologically bad impact on them," Yousuf said. "They are aware of dangers like abduction and becoming a target around foreigners but they have no alternative.”

He said that the Ashiana centre is planning basic education programmes for street children to alert them to the daily dangers they face.

Borhan Younus is a freelance reporter based in Kabul.