The cost of war

A place where peace and joy are just distant memories

Over the past 30 years, since the Russian invasion, Afghanistan has been beset by war and suffering. And yet the people of that country remain incredibly resilient. Here, a cross-section of ordinary Afghans express their hopes and fears for their country's future.

'I'm a working woman, single, I am not afraid'
The midwife, Sabera Turkmani, 27

Sabera Turkmani Midwife Sabera Turkmani on her way to work. Photograph: Havana Marking

For some, the civil war in the 80s had its advantages. Leaving as a refugee at the age of three, Sabera Turkmani was brought up in Iran. "Despite all our hardships, Iran has a very good education system. Staying there opened our minds and made me understand the rights of women. I am not a typical Afghan sister." Sabera and her family stayed there for 20 years and she says the experience changed their opinions about the world. They have a more global understanding now.

Turkmani qualified as a midwife in Tehran. For two years, she worked on the border Afghan refugee camps helping deliver hundreds of children. "It was an amazing experience, but it made me want to come back to my country and try to help build a new future here. I have real skills and Afghanistan needs those."

When Turkmani was 23, she and her father decided to return but arriving back in Kabul was a shock: "I cried for three weeks. Our house had been razed, the city was destroyed. It was not the country I had dreamed of." But by the end of the year, they decided to stay for good. Her father started to rebuild the house (for the third time) and she looked for a job.

"The situation for women at that time was terrible. The hospitals were disgusting, the healthcare dreadful and women were scared to go to the clinics." At the time, there were only 467 midwives in the country and in some areas maternal mortality was one in three, the worst in the world. Nationally, the maternal death rate was one in seven on a par only with Sierra Leone. Sex and pregnancy had become Russian roulette.

"Further research," she explains, "revealed that 70% of those deaths were preventable." She was determined to use her experience and joined an American NGO as a midwife trainer. "It wasn't easy - how can you train women who are illiterate? Or at best only have an elementary education? And on top of that women were scared to work. It was a huge challenge."

It has taken a long time to make a difference, but Turkmani really feels that progress has finally been made. Eight years on, she is now the midwifery programme officer for the HSSP (Health Services Support Project) and travels the country setting up and managing the education of the new wave of midwives. "There are now training centres in 27 of the 34 provinces and 2,400 trained birth attendants. It is an amazing thing."

Key to their success has been the community approach that her team takes. "The women who come forward for the course are selected by the local people - the elders, the mullah, the people who will work with her on a day-to-day basis. When she begins the course, we know where she will work when she graduates a year later. It will be where she comes from." The midwife thus becomes an important and valued member of a society, protected as much as she can be by her community.

It hasn't been all good news. Five midwives have been murdered by insurgents, targeted firstly because they work, but also because they are ultimately employed by an American NGO. Turkmani has to travel into the most insecure and dangerous areas, wearing the burka and braving "the enemy". "I am an exception to every rule," she tells me. "I am a working woman, I am single, I am not afraid. But every day I say goodbye to my parents and I don't know if I will see them that evening. It is the insecurity of war that is the worst thing. How can people invest in their own lives if they don't what those lives will be?"

'Really, it all goes back to the British. They should just leave us alone'
The shopkeeper, Sakhi Daad, 70

Sakhi Daad Sakhi Daad, Kabul shopkeeper. Photograph: Havana Marking

"Afghan people are just about alive, but they are not living. Not really, not in their hearts." Sakhi Daad shakes his head. Three decades of war, exile and military campaigns have taken their toll. "Every day we hear about the bombs and I feel I have heard it all my life: the same news, the same knowledge that Afghans are dying, the same sorrow. I'm tired of this now."

Daad is one of the few people old enough to know what peace feels like. Born in the early years of Zahir Shah's reign, he witnessed one of the longest periods of stability Afghanistan has seen. He knows that the world thinks Afghans are born to fight, that there will always be savage warfare here, but he believes differently: "I tell my grandson that peace is possible. I don't know if he believes me."

Like many of the older generation, Daad is suffering from depression. "I haven't seen the face of peace for so long it is killing my soul," he sighs. "Many, many Afghans have had to leave their homes and go to refugee camps to live like dogs. How do we recover from that?" He is referring to the 5 million-plus Afghans who had to flee the Soviet invasion and the further 2.5 million who left Afghanistan to escape both the Taliban and the US/Nato invasion.

Most of these had little choice but to settle in border camps and rely on aid. The largest camp was in Peshawar just over the border in Pakistan where Daad and his family went, living in tents and starving half to death. "And this year all the poor people bombed in the Swat valley - they are Pashtun like me, even if they are in Pakistan. Every time I hear their story on the radio I remember what my family went through."

Daad returned to Kabul when the Taliban fell in 2001 and now runs a small provisions store with his son. He sells the basics - eggs and olive oil, ketchup and rice - and is a respected elder.

Recorded security incidents in the city are down dramatically this year as fighting has been concentrated on the battlefields down south and on the Pakistani-Afghan border. He believes that long-term peace is possible if the government strategy changes. "About 90% of this country wants peace, but we have to talk to the other 10%. We have to bring the Taliban into the government, to include them in the discussions. It is the only way forward."

People in the shop look up, surprised, when he says this, but he is keen to point out that it is the Afghan Taliban he means, not the Pakistani Taliban. "Until the Pakistanis leave us alone and get out of this country, there will never be peace." The idea that it is foreign Taliban, foreign al-Qaida and foreign jihadis causing all the problems is a constant refrain in Afghanistan.

As a land-locked country bordered by six nations, their paranoia is understandable. "But," says Daad, "really it all goes back to the British 100 years ago. They should all just leave us alone."

'I believe peace will come after these elections'
The mechanic, Sayeed Jaan, 20

Sayeed Jaan Sayeed Jaan. Photograph: Havana Marking

Sayeed Jaan is nonchalant about the war. "Wars come and go," he says. "You cannot be an Afghan and be scared that a bomb might go off. They have been going off for years. You cannot live your life in fear like that."

He makes a decent living in central Kabul as a mechanic but despite his bravado he is in no doubt about the risks: "My uncle was killed when he trod on a mine last year. Who knows when that mine was laid? It could have been 20 years old. That's the thing about war - the effects go on for years."

Most of the time, the war feels for Jaan like background noise, a constant, irritating humming, that can only be drowned out by the Afghan pop music playing on the small radio in his yard. "I am glad the jihad armies seem to be on the run. They are not fighting for Afghanistan, but some other force - the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the Osama bin Ladens of the world. It is not my war. I wish they would let our country alone and we could develop."

The cost of war from his point of view is economic. In 2006-7, many of the rich Afghans left Kabul again when security failed. Kidnappings of wealthy Afghans became a serious threat; even those on middle incomes were a target. There were many bombs in the city and when President Karzai narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 2007 it was the final straw. Many businessmen upped and left with their families.

"Rich Afghans still do their business here, but they live abroad, taking their money with them. How can we grow as a country when the money is in banks that are not Afghan banks?"

Afghans like Jaan have no possible way of leaving. "We cannot get visas or afford the tickets. Only when bombs are landing actually on our heads again will we have to go somewhere. But I love my country and will stay and try to build a new place. When I have children, I want them to be proud."

Jaan became a mechanic because he was unable to go to school when growing up. He is from a poor family who couldn't afford to pay for his education. "But I love being a mechanic. It's a great job. Sometimes I laugh - if the roads were not this bad I wouldn't have so many cars to fix. Cars are destroyed on these streets, not by bombs but by the potholes and bumps."

But despite the lack of tarmac, Kabul is bursting with cars. There is little in the way of a public transport system and cars are run on cheap grade petrol. Most of the cars are from Japan. They are affordable and Jaan can get new parts easily. "I would love to work on a Mercedes-Benz," he says dreamily, "then I would know Afghanistan was really getting somewhere."

He is looking forward to the elections. "I don't like politicians, but I will vote - I have big hopes now. I believe that peace will come after these elections."

'I will vote for Hamid Karzai, mainly because I don't want someone new'
The housewife, Surya (surname not given), 35

Surya, who fled with her children to Pakistan Surya, in 2001 she fled with her children to Pakistan. Photograph: Havana Marking

"War divides families like nothing else," Surya tells me. "It is terrifying and awful and I don't know how to go on." Her eyes - the only bit of her body I can see - well up.

Her husband's brother is an ideological Taliban fighter and was determined to recruit her husband to the cause. "He said no and life has been hell ever since."

Two decades ago, both the Soviets and the mujahideen would force young men to fight for them, kidnapping them as they slept. When the offensive by western forces began in 2001, the Taliban were equally fierce in their recruitment techniques and threatened to kill Surya's husband and their children if he didn't fight. They had little choice she says; she fled with the children to Pakistan and he joined the battle in Kandahar.

"There was a bomb that hit his group, dispersing the fighters. My husband managed to escape and joined me in Pakistan. If you think it is dangerous for you as a westerner here, can you imagine what it is like for a man who has betrayed the Taliban?"

Surya and her family came back to Kabul, but still live in fear of a reprisal. Her husband cannot move freely, so finding work is near impossible. They are hungry all the time she tells me. The Kabul security situation might have improved, but if anything changes she feels her family will be among the first to die. She is terrified that the Taliban will come back a stronger force in the future. "What will they do then? Take my son this time?"

Surya approached me on the street and actually asked to be interviewed which is highly unusual for women here, but she wanted to comment on the forthcoming elections. She is going to vote, but not perhaps for the reasons you might think. "I will vote for Hamid Karzai but mainly because I don't want someone new to come in; we don't need any more change.

"Anyone new will spend the first five years just putting their friends and family in power and do nothing for the country. Karzai has already done that, so now he has time to do something for his people. He can protect us."

War by numbers: the statistics on Afghanistan

$100m Amount Taliban are thought to receive each year from the drugs trade.
89,500 Approximate number of personnel in the Afghan National Army.
1,013 Number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan during first six months of 2009, up 24% on the same period last year. Some 59% resulted from insurgents' bombs, 30.5% from western air-strikes.
5 million Number of Afghan refugees who have returned since 2002
65% of Afghans say they have good access to clean water, but 63% say they can't afford food.
60% of Afghanistan's economy is supplied by the drugs industry. Trade has boomed since the Taliban fell in 2001.
The country supplies 93% of the world's opium.
59% of Afghans support Nato's presence.
58% of Afghans think the Taliban are the single greatest threat to Afghanistan. Only 33% believe the government will defeat the Taliban, even with help from foreign powers.
50% of rural Afghans rural are estimated to have been left in poverty by war and drought since 2001.

Today's best video

Today in pictures