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Striking new photos show Taliban fighters and former Afghan soldiers who once fought against each other and are now being treated for war wounds side by side at the same drug rehabilitation center in Kabul.
Taliban fighter Abdul Qayum from Helmand province is shown learning to walk with a prosthetic leg at the Red Cross hospital – next to Khair Mohammad, a former Afghan army soldier who lost both of his lower limbs in a mine explosion, according to Reuters.
Nearby, former Taliban fighter Mohammad Ishaq, who lost his left leg to a gunshot wound in combat, underwent physical therapy alongside one of the soldiers he defeated.
“For years we fought against the infidels and we defeated them and I was hurt,†Ishaq said.
At the clinic – one of the few providing prosthetics in the area – an instructor helped Ishaq get an artificial leg fitted to replace the one he had lost.
He then trained to walk through a long exercise room under the gaze of medical staff and patients on both sides of the war.
“They help all those in need; whatever people need, they provide, â€Ishaq said of the hospital.
Ishaq spent eight years fighting in Helmand, where thousands of civilians and soldiers were killed and wounded before the Taliban captured Kabul when US troops withdrew in August.
Previously, Taliban war-wounded came to the center largely in secret, said Alberto Cairo, an Italian physiotherapist who heads the orthopedic program for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“There were Taliban coming here, but very few and secretly. Now they come very openly, so we have a lot of them, every 10 to 15 days, they come for different reasons, â€he said. “We help them like we help everyone else. “
Mohammad Tawfiq, a former Afghan soldier from Panjshir province, was also treated at the center after a Taliban ambush left him paralyzed from waist to toe.
“The fight is over for me, my fight is over,†he said. “I want to live in a peaceful environment. I can talk to anyone now.
