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Afghan Officials Promise To Ban Toy Guns To Stem A ‘Culture Of Violence’

CREDIT: AP
CREDIT: AP

Afghanistan banned the sale of toy guns after they caused eye injuries to more than a hundred young people in Kabul last week. Officials said the toys, which look like real guns but fire plastic or rubber bullets, perpetuate a culture of violence among the country’s youth.

“Interior Minister Noor-ul Haq Uloomi has ordered police forces to confiscate all toy guns…which can lead to physical and psychological damage among people,” a ministry statement said.

Celebratory fire is a common practice in Afghanistan and has been attributed to the high number of injuries during holidays like Eid, which took place last week. Many children opt to buy toy guns with the pocket money they receive from parents, relatives, and neighbors on Eid.

A spokesperson for the Interior Minister told reporters that security forces in the country will work to prevent the sale of toy guns and destroy those it collects from local shops. Sediq Sediqi said that efforts will be made to stop children from accessing toy guns by the next Eid holiday in late September.

Some toy vendors are open to the ban.

“These toys have good market here, but the government must prevent their import and production,” Mohammad Mansour, who sells toys in Kabul said. “We would be happy if this happened.”

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The effort may be positive in other way too. Many toy guns bear such a striking similarity to actual guns. Some American troops have worried they might mistake the toys for real weapons.

“The last thing we want to do is shoot an innocent person. But if they’re carrying that around, unfortunately it would be a horrible situation for everybody, and somebody is going to be hurt really bad,” First Lt. Shannon Ashley told an Afghan man selling toy shotguns and assault rifles in Helmand province a few years ago.

While many in Afghanistan have praised the ban as an important step in curbing a cycle of violence, it seems unlikely to be enforced in a country where tens of thousands of real guns have slipped out of official tallies.

According to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) the U.S. Department of Defense has lost track of hundreds of thousands of weapons it issued to Afghan security forces. The 2014 investigation found that 200,000 weapons — nearly half of those in one database — had missing information or duplicate numbers.

SIGAR also found that the U.S. supplied Afghanistan with way too many weapons — 112,000 too many in all. Last year, SIGAR estimated that the Afghan National Army had 83,000 more AK-47s than it needed. Department of Defense officials said that Afghan forces did not “have the authority to recapture or remove weapons.” Much of this surplus may well end up in the hands of militant groups, who have amassed stockpiles of weapons over the years.

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Given the country’s inability to repossess actual weapons, it seems unlikely that will be able to successfully destroy toy ones. And

“Children playing with plastic guns has a direct impact on their spirit,” Mohammad Sharif Selabi an Afghan pediatrics professor said. “The way they act today, they will grow up with what they played during childhood.”

Still, it seems like Afghanistan’s efforts to curb its so-called “culture of violence” by going after toy guns is misplaced. Given the country’s inability to repossess actual weapons, it seems unlikely that it will be able to successfully destroy toy ones.