I'm attaching excerpts from the story below, but couple of observations before that.
1. BBC-ish anti-establishment middle-class-ploitation guilty pleasure: I think journalism has its place in the society, but after working for a TV station and seeing pieces like this written and broadcast many times, I have a healthy scepticism about articles like that and the effect it has. I call it the "BBC-ish anti-establishment middle class guilty pleasure". You see an article like this, feel guilty, vow to be a good person next time, and move on to the next story, and sob/sigh about another tragedy (Myanmar, etc.) while the world remains the same. It gives you pleasure that you feel guilty, and reinforces your stereotype that you can still feel for people.
2. Tough guy journalism: More responsible and effective journalism for Peter Beaumont would have been to contact the president's office to inquire about following up about compensation (?) to be paid to the family. That would've benefitted the family and provided some balance or perspective. Rather, the editorial decision was to propagate the "macho" image of "hard" journalism, and publish an article about a poor family and blame the government in a newspaper far far away from the galaxy. Look, ma, I'm in Afghanistan, and look how tough I sound in my criticism! Here the journalist avoids being part of the solution.
Anyways, without further venting, here's the article.
Syed Ali was playing on the roof of his mud-brick house when the killers came for Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai last week. Karzai survived the attack on Kabul's broad parade ground. Ten-year-old Syed Ali, a kilometre away watching his mother cleaning almond shells to supplement the family's winter fuel, died, with two others, when he was hit by a stray bullet.
Amid the furore of how a plot - apparently known of in advance - could have come so close to killing Karzai, the death of Syed Ali has all but been forgotten. An official from the President's office came to see the family and said he would come again. When I met the family, they were still waiting for his return.
His mother can barely speak; two days of crying has reduced her voice to a croak. The boy's uncle tells the story of yet another of the thousands of Afghanistan's dead - as the sporadic conflict has worsened in the last two years - whose stories are never told. 'He was a clever little boy,' said Syed Jan Agha. 'He wanted to be a doctor when he grew up.'
The family leads us to the tiny flat roof. There are some spilled nutshells; a little stain in the mud. The uncle points to where the bullet flew from, near the small dome of a mosque just visible in the distance. Another uncle, Sadiq Kaka, shows us a video taken on his mobile phone. It shows a child with thick dark hair. He seemed almost alive, lying on what looks like a slab. His wound is a little tear, by his right armpit.
When he was not at school, his uncle says, Syed Ali sold matches to support his family, whose staple diet is rice and water. 'We did not even have enough money to pay for the taxi to take him to be graveyard,' he says. 'So we had to borrow money for the funeral. You know, after the Taliban fell, we were promised a bright future. But those who had money benefited and the poor ... we are still poor.'
Syed Ali's father, Kamal, says: 'In the time of the civil war my elder son was also martyred. This was the second son to die.'
