“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest…. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.”

The pale faces of the undernourished children who are wandering the streets and the trembling women in the cold weather begging from dawn to dusk are the heartrending stories of the day. Perhaps they may not have the roof over their heads or pillow to rest their heads on. In Kabul city, if you wake up from a deep sleep in an early morning and come out to street, you will see an old woman is already there trembling with cold and her eyes are rolling to see if any passersby give her a penny. Then, can you really mollify your conscience about those neighbors of yours who suffer sleepless nights due to serious hunger?

Presently, we see more female beggars in Kabul city and it is believed that many of them are those who have no bread-earners in their families. They struggle to nourish their children. Therefore, begging is the only way left for them. It is beyond doubt that begging is disgrace for women but they are with no choice other than accepting this humiliation.

Whenever I see such moral decline and lack of humanity in our society, I wish I were not ever born. Of course, being dead is far more honorable to live a life which is empty of morality and humanity. Whenever I see the lifeless eyes of the poor, a deep sense of shame makes me sweat.

I really feel nauseous with such types of life that we live. Moral values, which are the soul of a society, are taking their last breath and humans are short of humanity.  No one feels the pains and pressures suffered even by their next-door neighbors. So, how one can claim to cherish moral values?

One of the reasons behind failure of the recent moral crusade is due to a lack of moral courage in identifying the root of corruption not just in Afghanistan but in the world. The root of corruption lies in the economic dictatorship of the world’s economies by a handful of financial interests who operate using banks and corporations. Those who profit out of this reign are corrupted by their blood money and those who are victims of this reign are corrupted by cultural imperialism and poverty. Hence, if we really want a moral society, we have to end economic exploitation of the economic dictatorship of Afghanistan and the world. This involves a movement for economic rights for every person to be guaranteed the rights to survival – such as food, water, clothing, shelter, education and medical care. This is a mission to create an economy of the local people, by the local people and for the local people.

In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life or contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which has been so laboriously built up.

Afghan nation will never forget when the Taliban regime was teaching worship to the starving without helping them fight against economic constraints. To teach spirituality along with charity to the exploited is to reduce them to psychological slavery. Those who do this are the enemies of society. This is because someone who is a psychological slave not only is doomed to the damnation of exploitation and semi-starvation but because such a slave can never attain spiritual salvation which lies in the expansion of the mind and heart towards infinity.

Therefore, during the Taliban’s dictatorial regime, one will always remember those persecuted people, who lusterless faces showed no glow of well-being, who had been reduced to skeletons by malnourishment and suffering, who had no soft bed of flowers on which to rest – those persecuted people, buffeted by hunger and exhausted by injustice.

Lewis (1961), a famous sociologist, argues that the culture of poverty exists amongst many poor people. According to him, poverty is not the result of one’s disqualification or inability rather it is the result of social and cultural atmosphere in which the poor children get socialized. This passes to the next generation and they will come to know that their expectation of a better life is a dream. Ultimately, they will succumb to poverty and a low morale.

The stony silence of the government officials is very disappointing. The fact is that they live in skyscrapers, eat sumptuous meals, drive costly vehicles; no pains and pressures touch them. Hence, in such a utopian world, how can they realize the meaning of difficulties and poverty! They don’t ever want to imagine the dystopian world of the poverty-stricken families.