Day 13 - Kandahar
Kandahar, capital of
Kandahar province, with a population of nearly ½ million, is situated in the
South-eastern corner of Afghanistan. It is the country’s second largest city
and chief trade center; a market for sheep, wool, cotton, food grains, fresh and
dried fruit, and tobacco. Kandahar lies in the Pashtun heartland and was
Afghanistan’s first capital under Ahmad Shah Durrani in the 18th
century. In 1994 the Taliban took Kandahar in its first major victory, and
since then the city was used as their spiritual capital until their fall late
2001. Kandahar’s great treasure, a cloak allegedly belonging to the Prophet
himself, is safely kept in the Mosque of the Sacred Cloak, ‘Khilka Sharif’.
Prior to the Taliban’s capture of Kabul in 1996, Mullah Omar wrapped himself in
the cloak in front of a cheering Taliban crowd, declaring himself ‘Commander of
the Faithful’.
Recent changes in the local
government have caused instability in the law and order of the region. There
have been numerous bomb attacks this last year, mainly killing and injuring
innocent civilians. Child abduction has also increased – these children are
used mostly as sex-slaves, sometimes returned to their families for a large
ransom, or killed.
Pray that:
- Men
and women in leadership positions may have wisdom, unity and protection. Pray
for more educated Afghans to come from other areas and support their people in
this region.
- God
will send more workers. Each worker can only share with a few and slowly.
- God
will reveal himself through His children, the radio, literature, dreams and
other means, and that light will shine out from Kandahar into the dark southern
Pashtun provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul.
Isaiah 2:4 He will settle
arguments between nations. They will pound their swords and spears into rakes
and shovels. They will never make war or attack one another. CEV
(In Afghanistan for every 100,000
people, there are 1.1 doctors, 1.5 nurses, 0.3 midwives, and 0.16 trained birth
attendants. Infant and maternal mortality rates are the highest in the world.)
