NARGIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fm_zYoLfVA
The reality of life for Afghans in the capital city Kabul is harshest for the vast numbers of street children there.
After 30 years of war, many have lost their fathers to violence, family breakdown or drugs, and their numbers are growing, as Lyse Doucet of BBC World TV reports.
Nargis, a ten year old girl is just one of many:
Her day begins with a knock on the door. At 6am in Kabul, 10-year-old Nargis goes house to house begging for bread on the richest of streets in the Afghan capital.
The neighbourhood of Sherpur, famous for its ostentatious mansions, lies at the end of the hill where she and her family live in one room in a mud brick house.
On the day I meet her, everyone who answers her knock says they have no bread to give.
"Today, a little boy has been out ahead of me. He got it all," she explains in a whisper of a voice, before returning home without anything for her family to eat.
This waif, in a pink tunic trimmed with silver sparkles, is the breadwinner for a family of seven children.
In Afghan society sending Nargis' teenage sisters onto the streets would bring dishonour, and her younger siblings are too small.
Her father cannot or will not work. He is a drug addict.
So it is down to Nargis.
Nargis is just one of tens of thousands of street children in Kabul.
Born into a country torn by three decades of war and an economy fuelled by the opium trade, they lose their fathers to violence or vice.
By day, street kids weave impishly through vehicles stuck in Kabul's burgeoning traffic. They brandish everything from packets of gum, to tin cans wafting with incense, or a ragged bit of cloth to wipe your dusty windows.
By night, older teenagers are still hanging out at the main roundabouts, waving ribbons of cards for mobile telephones.
Children who should be at school are learning skills to survive on rough streets.
With an arsenal of tricks, from grinning to grabbing, they hustle to try to earn enough Afghani notes or one dollar bills to put food on their family's table.
And this army of children working on the streets is growing.
"Day by day, there are more and more street working children because refugees are still returning from Iran and Pakistan. And people are still being displaced by the war," says Engineer Mohammed Yousef, the founder and director of Aschiana, a refuge for street children.
With a reputation for peskiness, they are often ignored or shooed away. But kids grow up.
"When they become adults, they will learn more from the streets and they will not learn a lot of positive things," warns Engineer Yousef.
"The majority of children have talent, and if they have the opportunity to learn in a good environment they will use that talent in a positive way and become good people, otherwise they will use that talent in a negative way."
Vulnerable children can fall prey to older street boys who turn to crime. They are also targeted by criminal gangs who traffic people and drugs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPAFSvgH_Xw
