¡¡by sportswriter Zhou Zongxin

    ATHENS, Sept. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Devastated by warfare and abject poverty, Afghanistan wants to show the world its spirit thrives.

    Leading the way is Mareena Karim, a sprinter who along with Sharifa Amahdi will be the first Afghani female to ever compete inthe Paralympic Games.

    The shy 14-year-old flew into Athens as the youngest member of a nine-person delegation, which includes three more athletes. On 21 September she will compete in the 100m in the T42 classification.

    "This is my first international competition. I was very happy to come here," she said from the Paralympic Village this week. "I ran in Kabul on the May 15th. There were more than 117 people competing. It was the national training camp and I was first in my race. Then I was selected for the Paralympic Games."

    "I am very happy to be competing for my country. All my family members, my mother and father and brothers, my uncles, came to the airport in Kabul to say goodbye to me. They are quite happy. They are eagerly waiting for good competition and maybe a medal."

    Speaking through an interpreter, Abdul Baseer, who is also the Secretary-General of the seven-month-old Afghanistan Paralympic Committee, Karim seems bewildered by the attention she is receiving.

    Prior to her departure from Kabul, a circuitous journey which took her to Oslo - the team took part in a two-week training camp there - she was interviewed by Afghanistan television and national radio reporters.

    The federation received financial support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which provided funding for the training camp and for the team's journey to Athens. The team's Chef de Mission, Kristian Marji Norheim, is Norwegian himself and was instrumental in getting the team on track.

    It was Baseer though who encouraged Mareena to take up sport after she entered a school literacy program he was promoting. She also enrolled in public school for the first time last term after girls were finally admitted to the institutions following years of discrimination by the former Taliban government.

    "I was a school student and got information from the office, then heard about the paralympics from Dr. Baseer," she explains. "I was continuing studies in my house and when the Taliban left I went to school to take tests from the teachers. They entered me in class four."

    "I want to be a doctor when I am older, and also a good athlete."

    Mareena now lives in Kabul with her family - she has ten brothers and eight sisters - after they fled the horrors of civil war that raged around them in Kabisa.

    "They are living in a ruined house," said Baseer. "They fled the front lines of a battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban - just to be alive. Half of Kabul was destroyed. There is a roof over them. They have done some repairs."

    The Paralympic Games will be Mareena's second competition. Sheknows nothing about the competitors she will face, only that it isan opportunity to represent her people. The federation is realistic knowing that with only two months of proper training shecan hardly be expected to win a medal. They see it instead as a giant step for women's rights and for rights of the disabled in their homeland.

    Mareena lost both her feet as an infant and has never known what it is like to walk normally.

    "I don't remember what happened. My mother told me that when Iwas a small child my feet were burned. I was taken to hospital and my feet were amputated," she says quietly. It hasn't seemed to bother her as she claims to have many friends at home.

    After she said goodbye to a journalist, Baseer continues Afghanistan's quest for advancement.

    "This man," he says, pointing to a man seated in a wheelchair, "is Abdul Rahman Mohammedi, the president of our Paralympic Federation. When he wants to visit the president of the Afghanistan Olympic Committee he must climb four stories in his wheelchair. Two people must help carry him. And he is not able to go on the public transport."

    "We have only one stadium in the whole country, Ghazi Stadium. One day we had races and while we were using the track some other people were playing football. And the football went under the wheels of one of our athletes and caused an accident."

    It is hoped that with her participation in Athens Mareena Karimcan change all that and help bring better awareness and, possibly in the future, facilities where Paralympic athletes can thrive in Afghanistan. Enditem