An Afghan Police Story

An Afghan police story of sadness, all to real for many Afghan families. It is told by one foreign couple living in Afghanistan as humanitarian aid workers.

This is the story of our watchman's cousin told to us by our guard. He was in the National Police. He and his unit were shot down in broad daylight while riding in the back of a pick up truck on patrol.

In order to have an honorable death, his body needed to be buried within 3 days. Our guard and his family risked their lives to be sure his uncle's last son received an honorable death.

"The Afghan police wouldn't get the body for us, they said it was too dangerous...they would get shot if they went for it.

So we had to go get it ourselves.

My uncle, my father-in-law and I got a truck in the middle of the night and went to the hospital. The hospital was filthy and there were no doctors because all the doctors were afraid to be there at night.

There were dozens of injured men.

Men with arms missing...men with legs missing... everything was SO dirty.

We had to search for my cousin's body and we finally found it. It was very scary, but we got it out in the night.

He was the last son of my uncle. My uncle lost three other sons in the fighting and now he has no more sons to lose."

This is the same family that lost a 5-year-old cousin to the cold weather last winter.

Indeed, EVERY Afghan family has their own story of tragedy and sadness.

Afghanistan is a beautiful, broken country.