KABUL: Habib Zada is a photographer but his two children, one year-old Zaki and six-year-old Harez, will never see his pictures. Born from an arranged marriage between blood relatives , they are both blind - the victims of an ingrained tradition, like many handicapped youngsters in Afghanistan.

In a stark room heated by a wood stove at their house in Kabul, where Zada lives with his wife and 17 other relatives, the elder child continuously rubs his eyes and grabs hold of his father.

"Is it day or night?" the boy asks, unaware of the light filtering from a small gas lamp in the centre of the room. As first cousins, Zada and his wife Hadaija grew up together before they were married in 1997.

"I told my father, 'if you want, I'll follow your directions but it is not good to marry a cousin,'" Zada, who spoke using a pseudonym, said with a doleful look. "At the time, I had another girl in mind. I didn't want to marry for another five years, but he said I was his oldest son and he wanted to see my wedding".

Faced with his father's intransigence and being aged just 20 at the time, Zada gave in - despite the fact that two of his brothers are blind and that in marrying his cousin he increased the risk of passing on the problem.

The United Nations estimates between 800,000 and two million Afghans suffer from a disability. A quarter were caused by Afghanistan's 25 years of war but specialists are slowly coming to the conclusion that many of the rest result from arranged intrafamilial marriages.

"In Afghanistan, disability is caused by war, accidents, poverty, diseases for mother and children, and forced marriages between cousins," said Parween Azimi, an official at the Ministry for Martyrs and the Disabled, recently.

"Hundreds of families have disabled children for that reason," she said, adding that it remained a highly sensitive subject. Masooda Jalal, Afghanistan's new Minister for Women, who is also a paediatrician, said: "More than 13 years ago, I remember a survey that said that hundreds of thousands of Afghans were mentally disabled."

According to the survey "intermarriages were the first cause of this disability," she said. Jalal had been combating the practice and planned radio programmes to get information to the public, but had to stop when Afghanistan's civil wars began in the early 1990s.

In the meantime, Zada married his cousin. "Our two families knew each other and mine thought that meant I could stay close to them," said his 28-year-old wife, sitting on cushions on the floor.

"After we were told that our son Harez was blind I cried all the time. I was watching him hoping that he would get better. "My friends came to me and said 'it is not only your problem, it is everybody's problem.'"

"Afghan culture is like this. The daughter should not go away," said her mother Rahila as she cuddles little Zaki. Masooda Jalal has a more searching explanation. "Why they are happy to do that? Because of the security and safety of the girl. There is so much harshness (against women) that every parent has that fear."

Poverty is another factor, with families marrying amongst themselves to avoid paying a large dowry, both Jalal and Azimi maintain. "I hope that the Ministry of Women can design a programme so that the next generation of Afghans is stronger," Jalal said. -AFP