KABUL: When Harafa came to the US Embassy here on Sunday, she did not ask for compensation for the loss of her husband, killed when a stray American bomb landed on her family’s compound last fall; the death of her 14-year-old son or the six other members of her extended family killed in the same raid on her neighbourhood. All she asked for was help in rebuilding her home. Harafa and her five surviving children have worn out their welcome at a neighbour’s, where they are crowded into a single room.

She and about 60 other Afghans from across the country came here seeking help, if not answers, from America. They are neither Taliban nor Al Qaeda. Yet they lost homes, possessions and loved ones to the anti-terrorism bombing campaign. Michael Metrinko, an embassy official, emerged from the compound on Sunday to listen to the Afghans and accept their petitions for aid. But he said he could offer only his sympathy.

The embassy, he said, recommended in January that the US government offer compensation to civilians who suffered from the bombing. But the State Department and the Pentagon have not agreed on how to respond after weeks of discussion, and he finds the delay frustrating. “You can’t imagine how difficult it is to listen to stories like this,” he said. “We get them a lot. It’s not easy to tell people we can’t give them an answer.”

Because of the raids, Harafa and her younger children were living with relatives. She did not hear about the bombing for two days. By the time she returned, what was left of her husband’s body and that of a 14-year-old son were being wrapped in a sheet at a mosque. “The bodies were destroyed,” she said. “They were in pieces.”

Harafa knows the bombing was an accident. But that does not explain, she said, why Americans don’t seem to care what happened. “Why?” she asks. “We are not Taliban. We are just poor people. We are just labourers.”

Because of the bombing, Ali Jawad refuses to go to school. He was injured in the head, and his face is permanently scarred. He hates walking by the bombed-out remnants of his home, turned to lumps of mud by recent rains. Harafa’s daughter Fatima, 10 grew quiet when she was asked what would happen if they had to leave their neighbour’s home. “Right now, we don’t know where we will go,” she said, starting to cry. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Baltimore Sun.