Disabled Afghan war vets demand more government support

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of disabled Afghan war veterans, many missing arms or legs and dressed in rags, staged a protest rally in central Kabul on Tuesday, accusing the government of failing to pay them monthly stipends and misusing aid donations.

The men gathered outside the Health Ministry around noon, but were blocked from marching to President Hamid Karzai's office by a cordon of riot police carrying plastic shields and night sticks.

They dispersed after a protest leader, Haji Rahim Shah, said he would meet with Karzai and report back on the meeting's results. There were no known arrests or injuries.

"We're here demanding our rights," said Mohammad Akbar, who lost his right leg from the knee down in a land mine explosion. "We're not terrorists, we're sons of the nation who sacrificed and suffered."

Many protesters claimed they hadn't been paid their promised $2.20 monthly stipend in more than six months. They said that amount was too little anyway and demanded bigger payments, along with coupons for cheap food, subsidized housing and jobs with the new government that was founded after the fall of the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime in late 2001.

The demonstrators were a mix of former soldiers in the Soviet-backed Afghan government army and "mujahedeen" rebels who were their bitter foes during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.

That fighting, and the civil war that followed the Soviet pullout, left about 80,000 soldiers with lost limbs or other permanent disabilities. Many are now destitute, forced to live among Kabul's war-devastated ruins and survive on handouts.