by Daphne Liddle
GUY SMALLMAN is a rare kind of
photojournalist; he is a freelance who is not sponsored by any
of the big media
corporations or press barons but he gets to places in the world where there are
important stories to be told about the impact of war and conflict on local
people’s lives that western governments would prefer were not reported.
He is funded by a group of fellow
left-wing journalists known a Reel News, and has been visiting Afghanistan
regularly since 2008; he now has a network of friends there.
Guy does not make judgements or long
political comments – he lets his camera do the talking and leaves us to make up
our minds.
Last Tuesday, he launched a new booklet of
stunning photos of “the displaced” – Afghan people who have been forced from
their homes by the wars and are refugees in their own country, scraping by from
one day to the next on next to nothing.
The biggest killer among them is cold and
young children are the most vulnerable. One of the most poignant pictures is of
a man carrying the small body of his 18-month old niece, Saiyma Gadazia, to
bury her among the graves of other children after she froze to death on the
floor of her home in Char-e-Qamba camp last January.
Her father, Safarali Gadazia, an
unemployed labourer, had reluctantly moved his family to colder, more polluted
Kabul as the Sangin district of Helmand province became intolerable.
Without an ID card he could not get work
and would be arrested by the police or army on suspicion of being a “foreign
fighter”. If he carried an ID card he risked being detained and beaten by the
Taliban as a “government spy”.
Many of the pictures are children playing
in the rubble of bombed buildings in Kabul, or huddling round small heaters for
warmth.
Conditions are about to get worse as
neighbouring Pakistan is carrying out its threat to expel three million Afghan refugees, many of whom have to homes or land to return to.
The book launch in Shoreditch, east
London, was packed. Guy made a very short speech and Elsie Bowerman, whose
group Voices For Creative Non Violence runs loads of projects for disadvantaged
kids in Afghanistan, spoke of the reality of being a woman in modern
Afghanistan and the extra difficulties they face in making a living because of
the religious restrictions on women going out alone.
The
Displaced costs £10:00 and is published by Guy Smallman (guysmallman.com)
