KUNDUZ - World Environment Day was celebrated in Kunduz with an unusual group effort to clean city streets. The event, which saw nearly 1,000 residents take to the streets to collect garbage, was organized by civil society groups including Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency, the city government and UNAMA. But working alongside these groups was a large contingent of recently-reconciled anti-government elements.

“The event drew hundreds of reconciled forces who worked in different parts of the city to help clean our streets, ditches and garbage bins,” said Sayed Nasim Sadat, a representative from the Kunduz Provincial Peace Committee.

Those ex-combatants are part of a program funded by the Provincial Peace Committee that creates jobs and offers skills training to those who lay down their weapons. The clean-up efforts were part of a weeklong campaign that also included the opening rehabilitated sports fields and a lecture series on the environment.

“I was tired of fighting, it was a useless life, therefore I joined the peace process and now I am happy to attend the city cleaning and work with my brothers,” said Noor Mohammad, one of the former anti-government combatant living in Kunduz.

In recent years the population of Kunduz has swelled to nearly 300,000, from just 50,000 about ten years ago. Many of the newcomers came to the city to flee violence in the countryside and this influx has strained city services.

“We did this massive effort because before you could see water in Kunduz streets and in the streams which were full of garbage,” said Najibullah Omerkhil, the mayor of Kunduz. “Cleaning the city this way is a way for residents to understand that they belong to a community.”