Emancipation US-style in Afghanistan

Afghan mosque and children (Souvid Datta) May 12 2015

Emancipation US-style: photojournalist Souvid Datta did an album of photos called “Contemporary Afghanistan.” Taken in Kabul, many appear to show affluent Afghans at play (like the man bowling at $35 a lane & kids playing on their X-box). But it also has photos of amputees from land mines learning to walk on their prosthetics at the Red Cross rehab center & these street children playing outside the Karte Sakhi mosque. Many of these kids survive by cleaning gravestones & shrines in the nearby cemetery.

Asciana, an orphanage that partners with the UN, reports the number of street children in Kabul nearly doubled between 2008 & 2014–from 37,000 to 70,000. You just can’t keep up with all the glories of US-NATO emancipation!

The artist statement with this album referred to “the backdrop of Afghanistan’s first & messy democratic transfer of power.” Is that what you call occupation? A “backdrop” & a “messy democratic transfer of power”?

Do a people that built this & other magnificent mosques & buildings going back centuries appear to need emancipation by drone? Do 70,000 homeless children testify to emancipation?

US-NATO out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq! No more phony withdrawals! Grab a placard, find a march & join it.

(Photo by Souvid Datta from August 2014)

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