Inside, you climb a narrow staircase and step into an ante-chamber in which Tamim's mother sits on the floor. She wears a purple scarf and the skin around her eyes, after four weeks of crying, has become heavy and blistered. Tamim

didn't die robbing or torturing or killing." The family thinks they will receive about £12,000 in compensation, not much in comparison to the £53,000 that a dead American mine-clearer's family   might  expect.  But  these   are   Afghan

is dead; which is why I am sitting in this tiny room opposite this quiet, solemn woman.

Her son's killer was a very tiny, small, round, yellow cylinder buried beneath the ground – a small fragment of   an   American   cluster

prices for Afghans dying in Afghanistan while trying to destroy the United States Of America's weapons.

The mines, of course, come from a host of countries, some from the old "evil empire", others from  the  current  "axis  of

bomb – which was infinitely more sophisticated and more efficiently made than anything in this ramshackle home. Tamim worked for the Halo Trust, the mine-clearing operation to which Diana, Princess of Wales, gave so much publicity, and he was an experienced man, 25 years  old,  with  four  years  of de-mining  to his

evil" and, needless to say, many from the "civilized" countries which are fighting the war of "good against evil": the old Soviet Union, Iran, Korea, the new Russia, Belgium, Italy, the United States and Britain.

But Tamim – like so many other Afghans – was

name.

"I know what I'm doing," he used to tell his mother. "It was partly because of our poverty that he did the work," she says. "I took him to the Halo office for this job. He got $130 (£98)  a  month.   On  the

killed by an American cluster bomb, 20 per cent of whose "bomblets" bury themselves in the ground, turning themselves in a millisecond intoa mine. When the Americans dropped this ordnance on the Taliban, they must have   known   this;   they

morning of his death, he had been taking a rest in the minefield. He had some yogurt and sat in a corner and all of a sudden it exploded."

This kind of story-telling has a certain ritual, the circular memory that recasts, again and again, the moment of terrible truth. "His uncle came home that day – it was a month ago – and he was crying. He said he had a headache. Then he said that Tamim had injured himself. The moment he said 'injured', I knew that it was over. But thank God at least my son died a dignified death, trying to save other people's lives. He         

must have known that each of their missions in their "war on terror" would later cost the lives of countless innocent Afghans.

Sitting on the table of Abdul Latif Matin, the cluster bomblet looks more like a toy than a killer. It is round and yellow with a canvas fan on the top. "BOMB. FRAG BLU 97A/B 809420-30 LOT ATB92G109-001," is printed on the side. BLU stands for Bomb Live Unit and 202 of these little murderers are inside each 430kg CBU – Combined Effects Munition – dropped by American planes.