The people of Chavosh live in such a faraway place that they laugh when I ask how often they see U.S. or NATO troops. "Never. We have never seen anyone," says Abdullah, 35. He was originally from the village but now lives in Herat, where he is a solider in the new Afghan National Army (ANA). "Except for one truck that drove past and the men waved, I am the only ANA that this village has ever seen."

The villagers have literally never seen a Western foreigner before, and every man in the village, it seems, gathers around me as Abdullah explains just how remote the town is. "When the Taliban came to Ghowr, we fought them in Chaghcharan, not here," he recalls. "After they won, they only sent a Talib on a motorbike to tell the village that it was now controlled by the Taliban. Then he left and we never saw any Talib again."

The village farms wheat and raises sheep and cattle. Or it did before the drought forced farmers to sell the majority of their herds. Now they grow some wheat and occasionally kill a sheep for meat. Last winter saw significant snowfall for the first time in seven years, so there's currently water for crops and animals. But the only well dried up five years ago, and that leaves the runoff water as the only drinking supply. And this runoff is killing the village.

Mullah Nassir al-Afghani is the village elder, religious leader, schoolteacher and medical healer. He earned the latter title because he prays if you are sick, which is the only treatment you can receive short of a six-hour donkey ride to a neighboring village. In that lucky hamlet, you can find a mobile clinic staffed by an Afghan, who qualified for the job after a four-week course. And, being mobile, he's often not there. Without phones or electricity in the village, it's hard to check and make sure the clinic is there.

Mullah Nassir says that every year, in a village of 1,500 people, 50 children die from dysentery after drinking runoff water during the summer, or from respiratory illness in the winter. Pregnant? Complications of any kind? It's a 15-hour donkey ride to see a doctor in a hospital in the provincial capital. Unless you're due during the five months the mountain passes are filled with snow. In that case, the mullah prays for you. About 30 women a year die in childbirth.

Between the women and children alone, about 5 percent of the village dies each year. People have starved to death during severe droughts, but these days that's rare, although everyone in the village is supernaturally thin.

The men and I walk to the fields so they can show me how they harvest wheat. We pass a pile of bricks that have a blanket strung over the side of one clump. It doesn't quite make it to wall status.

One of the older men, who looks 80 but tentatively estimates his age at 50, points at the rubble. "This is my home," Said Mohammed tells me. "This is where I live in a very bad situation."

Unthinkable as that situation might be, it gets worse as family and friends gather outside the home of Abdul Qasem, 60, who has two wives and 10 children. They are celebrating the engagement of Abdul Qasem's daughter, Roshan, who he claims is 11 years old, to another Said Mohammed, 55, from a neighboring village. Roshan, who looks 8 years old, has to be called away from playing tag with other girls to attend her engagement to a 55-year-old man. When married, she'll join his other wife, three sons and a daughter about her age.

After Mullah Nassir leads 10 or so men in a five-minute prayer, Abdul Qasem drags a terrified lamb to the ground and cuts its throat with a small knife. Blood pools in front of his brick-and-manure home. He declares that this is a tradition to celebrate the engagement, as the lamb gurgles its final breath. I have seen such ritual slaughter throughout the Muslim world, but traditionally the meat of the sheep is donated to the poor. Today, the village will eat lamb.

"I am very poor and have many problems," Abdul Qasem tells me later, as we walk past his small patch of recently harvested poppy crops. "I need money and I have three other daughters," he says of the marriage. "Do you think I want to marry my daughter so young?"

Everyone in the village insists that it will be years before Mohammed can pay off the dowry, which Abdul Qasem claims is 100 sheep and 10 cows. Women in the village later admit that Said Mohammed will claim his bride within a year and pay far less than what I am told. As it stands, he is allowed to sleep in the same room and have relations that stop just short of intercourse.

When the subject of help from the international community comes up, the men of Chavosh laugh. They know of the World Food Program, which helps feed rural Afghans, but they've never seen an aid worker here. "They give the province food aid, this we know," one man tells me. "But it is kept by the warlord in another village. He has no relatives in this village. So he does not send us aid to live."

It is well known throughout the provinces that local warlords hoard and deny aid to villages. In general, the country's warlords are esteemed commanders from the anti-Soviet jihad who kept their foreign contacts, men and weapons. They wield enormous influence through tribal bonds, money and violence.

NGO and diplomatic sources refuse to discuss the subject of warlords. But several knowledgeable sources inside the international community agree that dealing with warlords is simply part of doing business in rural Afghanistan. They admit, too, that the majority of attacks on Western aid workers, contractors and journalists, blamed on the Taliban, actually arise from the warlords.

As Sunday's parliamentary votes are being tallied, many Afghan people remain deeply concerned that warlords' influence will only get stronger. Afghan human rights groups have identified at least 150 candidates that could be called warlords or jihadi commanders. In fact, regardless of the final vote, observers say that many of the powerful commanders will become members of the new Parliament.

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