The Forgotten Heroes From A Forgotten War.

"The worst is when we have someone who has lost his legs and his eyes. We have a young man right now who has this."

Makay Siawash stops talking for a moment. Then she carries on with all the reasons why up to 8,000 Afghans a year turn for help to the Kabul Orthopaedic Organization. This is the agency she runs from a Soviet-era building within the Afghan National Army hospital compound in the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul.

"A lot are from mines, rockets, bombs. But there are also traffic accidents, children who have been blinded, or they are deformed from malnutrition or from some trauma, or malformation during pregnancy. And women, sometimes it is from hard physical activity, or they have been hit by their husbands. We have a lot of children and women. But a lot are from mines."

The young, blind and legless man whose sad story caused Siawash to catch her breath had stepped on one of the Taliban's "improvised explosive devices" -- of precisely the kind that so routinely kill so many American, Canadian and British soldiers. . .

Heroes.

Background here. The series begins today and runs Thursdays and Fridays for some time to come.