Word: hekmatullah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fighting has not provided the solution, so now we have to try negotiations," says Ahmedzai, an employee at an international-development agency. But that's an option born of despair. "We hate the Taliban, but we also hate the suicide bombings," says 18-year-old student Hekmatullah Hekmat. "In order to have a peaceful, stable Afghanistan, we must negotiate." But Hekmat adds that if the price of peace is a return to the social strictures of the Taliban era, "I will run away to Pakistan - all of the Afghans will...
...Hekmatullah's house cracked apart like an egg. So did Hekmatullah. A bullet shattered his leg, and another lodged itself inches from his spine. His brother Abdul Halim rushed him to Kandahar hospital. But that night there were dozens of wounded, lying in the corridors on a stinking, bloodstained floor, and the doctors had fled during the night's bombing...
...That was the start of Hekmatullah's odyssey of pain. With the two bullets still lodged in his body, Hekmatullah endured a day's drive over pitted roads to a hospital in Helmand province. "My brother was screaming all the time," Abdul Halim recalls. But no doctors were there, either. Nor were there any other painkillers or anesthetics. With so many Afghans fleeing the cities, another six days passed before Abdul Halim found a car that would take him past Kandahar to the Chaman border, a distance of over 150 miles. Imagine riding six days over dirt roads with...
...That's when the Edhi ambulance picked him up. From there, he was taken to the civil hospital in Quetta, where he still awaits an operation to remove the bullets. Abdul Halim, was beside him, gently massaging his brother's hand. Hekmatullah was bearded (of course), and he had a gaunt, ascetic pallor; it was like a deathbed scene by El Greco. "Why has this happened to my brother?" cried Abdul Halim in disbelief. Under the circumstances, I couldn't bring myself to explain about "collateral damage...
...since 1990, and I'd seen a lot of wounded Afghans. Usually, they inflicted this damage on each other. But this time was different. This time, it was my government that was doing the killing and the wounding. And I felt awful about it. All the beds around Hekmatullah were filled with Afghans injured in the bombings. Not one of them was a Taliban...