By Phillip O'Connor
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
DASHT-E QAL'EH, Afghanistan - Shomirzo said he has a problem. In fact, he said, he has five. They have beautiful dark eyes and hair, wear bright dresses and on this day, flash tiny, nervous smiles at visitors in their home.
"I want to stop this situation but every year you cannot stop this situation," Shomirzo said as he gestured around a room at the five daughters that his wife has given birth to in the last seven years.
Only 10 percent of married Afghan women aged 15 to 49 used any method of contraception, according to the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. For more than two years, the United States has paid for a birth control program here that distributes condoms and oral and injectable contraceptives.
The program allows families to space out the birth of their children and improve the quality of life for both women and children in a country that suffers some the world's worst maternal and child mortality rates, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. A woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes in Afghanistan, according to USAID. That compares to about one per day in the United States.
A recent study by Tufts University found that most rural Afghan women have no voice in family planning within their families and that many women wanted to learn more about birth control options.
Usually the husband or the mother-in-law make such decisions, said one USAID health official.
"There's a resistance to contraceptives because it's a conservative society," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
That's especially true in rural areas like Dasht-e Qal'eh, where progress for women has been slow and many rarely leave the home without being accompanied by a male relative.
The USAID effort involves making highly subsidized contraceptives available in the commercial markets and also provides free products and family counseling at more than 350 clinics and hospitals the agency oversees. In the 13 provinces where USAID is working to build a rural health care system, the use of all methods of family planning increased from 15 percent in 2004 to 28 percent in 2006, the USAID official said.
"WATCHING FOR A SON"
In 2001, as the war with the Taliban still raged, Shomirzo, 25, and his wife, Maisagoul, 27, thought long and hard about whether to bring another life into the world. Both were orphans of war.
His parents died in Kunduz, the victims of Taliban artillery. Shomirzo, only 16 at the time, was off fighting with the northern alliance. Her parents died in the war with the Soviet Union. Maisagoul had gone to retrieve water from a well, when a bomb hit her home. She A Wowas 10.
They questioned whether it would be right to have another child during such difficult times. But cultural pressures took precedent.
"I was watching for a son," Shomirzo said.
Shomirzo's hope for a boy wasn't just a misplaced measure of manly pride. He said he needs someone who will be able to earn money and care for him and his wife when he grows old. Staying with the husband of a daughter is not acceptable, he said.
And so he tried again, and again and again.
"It's a problem to feed so many," he said as he sat in a red-carpeted room, while his daughter, Shanaza, squirmed in his lap. A string of six apples hung from a wooden beam that helped support the thatched-mat roof.
During the conversation, Maisagoul stayed in another room, out of sight of the visiting men. She appeared only at her husband's request to have her photograph taken.
Shomirzo knows about birth control. He remembers a health care worker, who came to the village and talked about such things, he said.
But he chooses not to use them.
He still wants a son.
Life is difficult with so many children, but Shomirzo and Maisagoul are better off than many Afghans who live in rural areas. He makes from $2 to $4 a day building homes in the spring and summer. In the winter, he lives on credit extended by local shopkeepers.
He said he doesn't have the financial resources to buy a vehicle, purchase inventory or hire the farm hands needed to enter the drug business that is so prevalent in this area of northeastern Afghanistan. The nearby border with Tajikistan is a major transit route for opium, hashish and heroin leaving the country for Europe and elsewhere.
"If I had enough money, I would be in the drug business, but I don't have enough money," he said. He said he also feared getting killed.
In the last five years, he bought a small sliver of land adjacent to his dried mud house. He added rooms and planted a garden to house and feed his growing family.
Two satellite dishes sprout from his roof. A piece of cloth covers a television set. He likes to follow the news. He takes joy in reports about how international and American military forces continue to battle the Taliban. He also enjoys lighter fare, movies and shows broadcast from India, that take him far away from the desolate and monotonous life of his village.
He turned on the television and flipped through the channels that broadcast car races, soccer games and soap operas.
Car batteries sit in several rooms, the alternative power source during the 21 hours a day that electricity isn't available.
He said his life is better now, but still difficult with so many children.
Shomirzo, who doesn't know how to read, said he plans to send his daughters to school. He hopes they leave the country to avoid the war that has been so much a part of his life. He is worried about the reports he sees about the resurgence of the Taliban in other parts of the country.
"If that situation came up to this area, it would be bad," he said. "That time was not good for me or my family. Now we are happy."
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