By Ellaha Rasa
Twenty years of the Taliban war have left many victims; not only soldiers killed on the battlefield but their wives and children who lost their income and are living in misery.
It’s 38 degrees in Herat and even hotter in the kitchen where Arifa Salehi is busy cooking. But the 32-year-old widow feels lucky to have found a few days of work preparing food for the annual Afghan Lazuli exhibition. She and her nine-year-old son were left penniless after Taliban killed her husband, Gul Ahmad last year.
“My husband was killed on the battlefield in Bala Buluk district of Farah province,” she says. “It was murder, but no one was identified or arrested.’
Gul Ahmad had been a government soldier for five years, earning a salary of 10,000 Afghanis, an amount equal to 115 USD a month. He was only allowed to leave the battlefield for two months a year but the family could live relatively well from his income. Arifa told Rukhshana Media his death was the most painful wound of her life and she had not been able to recover from what happened.
“I have one child left from my martyred husband. I work and live with one kidney, and I can hardly find anything to eat,” she says.
Arifa’s kidney failed shortly after her husband’s death, an infection exacerbated by stress and hard work. She had to borrow 50,000 Afghanis, an amount equal to $580 USD to have it removed in a private hospital in Herat.
“I went to all my relatives’ houses and they lent me 1,000 to 2,000 until the 50,000 Afghani was completed,” she says. “But so far, I have not been able to pay my loan.”
After the Taliban seized power across Afghanistan, Arifa had no choice but to ask the group that killed her husband for help to raise her son.
“The Office of Martyrs and the Disabled gave me a form and after entering the information about my husband and confirming it with the county councilor and Imam of the mosque, my request went to the commission.’
The Department told her the commission approved her application and sent it to Kabul for processing. But she’s heard nothing since.
“Whenever I go to the Martyrs and Disabled Head Office I get neither an answer nor money,” she continues despairingly. “I don’t know anyone in the Taliban administration. Maybe that’s why my application is not processed and they won’t give me the card to get aid.”
So Arifa earns what money she can cleaning other people’s homes, usually getting 200 Afghanis, an amount equal to US$2.5. “I do house cleaning to feed my son, but some days I don’t even earn fifty Afghanis,” she adds.
Arifa is allowed to live in a room in her brother’s house temporarily. Her son Basir, a fourth-grade school student, is struggling with the mental and emotional hardship of losing a father. She says he is always sad and reclusive and pays little attention to his studies. But he has to share the burden of trying to make a living.
At sunrise, he puts a brush and shoe polish in his bag and heads to school. At noon he starts cleaning shoes in the scorching heat in the streets of Herat, only returning home at dusk.
The story of Arifa’s life is the story of hundreds of Afghan women who lost their husbands in the war and now live in dire economic conditions.
Since the Taliban took full control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Rukhshana Media has documented how slain military personnel have been forgotten and how difficult the lives of their wives and children have become.
Like 14-year-old Parwana, a resident of Kandahar province, who after the disappearance of her father, a soldier of the National Army, is the sole breadwinner of her family of four and provides for her family’s expenses by selling luffa and bags every day.
Fatima, 36, lives with a daughter and a son in Kabul city. Her husband, a former army soldier, died six years ago during the fall of Kunduz province. Currently, Fatima is trying to support her family alone by setting up a home bakery.
Feroza’s husband, a soldier of the National Army, died three and a half years ago in the war between the country’s security forces and the Taliban in Kandahar province. She lives with her four children in the city of Nili Daikandi and says that she has not received any financial assistance after her husband’s death.
The Ministry of Martyrs and the Disabled promised to pay monthly allowances to people with disabilities and orphans.
But the Taliban announced last year that it had canceled support for ten thousand orphans and disabled. The Ministry called them ‘ghosts that don’t exist’.
There is also concern that the Taliban have deprived families of the former security forces of their rightful allowances.
For all the hardship, Arifa is feeling happy as she serves food to her customers at the Lapis Lazuli exhibition. One hundred booths are dedicated to women’s handicrafts for the four-day exhibition. There are many hungry visitors for Arifa’s stall. She sells each Bolani for 20 Afghanis and by evening has made 400 Afghanis, equivalent to US$5. After a week of no work, she will have enough to buy the necessaries of the house. It’s been a good day.
