We all went battling the wars of others
in a World that proclaims
Globalisation
as a solution
for their emptiness
It´s like striking a match in the darkness
to see where you are
only to find yourself in the wrong tunnel
And it´s nothing for you there
´cause all my words go through rooms of strong light
and I remember every word:
I´m a Well Trained Man in the Military, My Sweetheart
Nothing can stop me now
But you never wished for a Gardener
in an earthly Paradise
You only want to be a Flower
in your faraway place

Kabul zoo on Tuesday unveiled its new star attraction – Marjan the lion, who lived on a rooftop in the city until being rescued by animal welfare officials last year when close to death.

A businessman in the Afghan capital had bought the male lion cub as a status symbol for $20,000, and kept his pet on a roof terrace.

But the fast-growing cat was seriously ill when Kabul municipal officials tracked him down last October.

"We found him in a very dire condition. He was almost dead. He couldn't move. He couldn't even raise his head," vet Abdul Qadir Bahawi told AFP.

"We were not sure that he would survive. But our efforts paid off, and he is much better. Now he loves to play with us. I think he loves us a lot."

Marjan is named after a famous half-blind lion who lived at Kabul zoo and became a symbol of Afghanistan's national survival after living through coups, invasions, civil war and the hardline Tasliban era, before dying in 2002.

The first Marjan, born in 1976, was blinded by a grenade thrown by a soldier whose brother had been killed after entering his cage.

The new Marjan made headlines around the world when AFP found him last year, living on the roof of a compound in the upmarket Taimani district of the capital.

His owner denied it was cruel and said he was looking after the lion well and feeding him fresh meat daily. But the lion's health declined fast in his unsuitable living quarters.

Government inspectors took him from the owner and started an intense five-month rehabilitation programme at the zoo to bring him back to health, including regular massage and physiotherapy sessions.

"Marjan eats about eight kilos of meat every day at 4pm," said Qurban Ali, the lion keeper at the spartan zoo.

"He has been doing very well. He eats a whole cow leg, including the bone."

Marjan, who is aged about one, will soon be on show to the public for the first time after moving to a larger enclosure that he will share with a female lion donated by China.

Bahawi plans to see if there is any chance of the two lions mating, but he warned that it looked unlikely.

"Marjan is ready, but the lioness is more than 15 years old and has had two serious operations. I think she is too old," he said.

  - Afghanistan..

Population estimated a 32.7 million

- Home to a number of ethnic groups

- Very mountainous and dry

- Only 6% of Afghanistan is cropable

- Temperatures range from 32-degrees in winter to 115-120-degrees in summer

- Precipitation: 10 to 12 inches per year in the form of snow

- Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth, with more than 53% of the population living under the poverty line

- Opium is the country's most valuable export

-Afghanistan imports much of its food and energy

-Agriculture is 90% of the labor gorce, with an unemployment rate of 40%

Education was the key to our Team's work with the Afghan farmers. For them to rebuild, a lot of local farmers, and a lot of local businesses were uneducated when it came to agriculture. "They were still trying to do farming practices that their grandparents did. They were not moving forward.

Education made a difference.

 

I keep my promises to make you happy forever..

have you always been with me

it seems as if in a dream

to look upon you and wonder

how happy i could seem

have you been inside

deep down inside my heart

where i could hide yet

you got the better part

have you always been with me

it seems as if it is true

from the earth i am bound

my heart lives within you

...and while the heart skipped a beat, I understood that it was not about to live life as decent as possible or even to succeed while living it - but to continue to be. This moment came to everyone who was involved in such horrors as ours here. It might come as a loud scream from an excited imagination or a blast from lips dry from fear - but at some point it always came to everyone when a cold hand clutched at your heart, and you stood on a ledge, all alone, staring down a bottomless pit...   

Swedish journalist Nils Horner, who yesterday were murdered on the streets of the Afghan capital Kabul, had a great interest to elucidate the Afghan situation and particular vulnerability. His last radio report, sent two days ago, was about just that. It's the same fanaticism that almost costed the Pakistani girl Malala her life. She fought for the right of girls to attend school, a blasphemy under the Taliban. Not to fuel Taliban aggression I could never teach rabies awareness in girls´ school here in Afghanistan.