BEIJING, KABUL--Two lions and a brown bear, a wolf, and a fallow deer arrived on October 2 at the Kabul Zoo in Kabul, Afghanistan, after four days en route from the Beijing Badaling Safari World in China. The animals, including the three-year-old lions Zhuang Zhuang and Canny, were donated by the China Wildlife Conservation Association in memory of Marjan, the lion half-blinded by a 1993 grenade attack whose endurance through more than 20 years of warfare made him a national symbol. Marjan died in January 2002, soon after the fall of the Taliban regime.

"We need new animals desperately,'' Kabul Zoo director Sher Agha Omar told Associated Press. The Chinese "promised us some birds too. Maybe they will be on the next flight," Omar hoped.

Garen visited the Kabul Zoo in April 2002, apparently in connection with work identified on the Cefn-yr-Erw web site as "engineer for an armored vehicle manufacturer, building, but delivering and demonstrating these specialized vehicles in most of the world's trouble spots."

"The people who have been so kind as to donate money to help the Kabul Zoo should be asking why these animals are being left in Afghanistan," Garen opined. "No matter how much money is given to Kabul Zoo and how much training is given, the basics of animal abuse will always be present."

Garen said that he saw "very little food available, and signs supposedly erected by one of the caring societies telling the locals not to tease the animals were not in evidence. The keeper was showing the locals how the monkeys reacted when poked with a long branch."

At another monkey cage, Garen said, "the keeper amused the locals by shooting small stones at the monkeys, who in turn thought after stones hit them and fell to the floor that the stones were food, and would chase them. Children were throwing stones at Samboo the black bear," whose nose and mouth were still badly infected from wounds inflicted by visitors during the Taliban years.

"The fox," Garen said, "had no fur from the back of his neck to the tip of his tail," with skin "like a piece of raw meat" from mange.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals echoed Garen. "More animals is the last thing the Kabul Zoo needs right now. The animals who have just arrived from China are at grave risk of suffering and possibly death," a WSPA press release said.

In addition, nine months after WSPA international projects director John Walsh led a veterinary team to the Kabul Zoo and delivered veterinary supplies, all paid for with funds raised by the American Zoo Association and European Zoo Association, WSPA charged that the Kabul Zoo still lacks experienced care.

Kabul Zoo director Sher Agha Omar told Associated Press that little donated aid had actually reached the zoo, said the zoo had seen nothing of a gift from U.S. school children that was known to have reached Afghan-istan, and added, "What we really need is money for our staff. They haven't been paid in months," though the WSPA relief mission did pay them back wages in January, according to relief effort coordinator David M. Jones.

"The Kabul Zoo is not a great place for animals," Jones readily acknowledged to ANIMAL PEOPLE. As director of the North Carolina Zoo in Greensboro, N.C., and board chair of the London-based Brooke Hospital for Animals, Jones raised more than $350,000 in aid for the Kabul Zoo last fall, and arranged for Walsh and team to visit, just in time to help ease Marjon's last days.

The zoo has also functioned as a quasi-humane society, hosting horse care clinics and sheltering feral cats in some of the war-damaged cages.

"I am pretty sure that the fox Garen mentioned is a new arrival, and that is probably why he looked bad," Jones said. "We did manage to slow down the Chinese in giving more animals," as the lions were originally offered on July 12. "But Afghanistan is a sovereign country, and one problem right now is the increasing bureaucracy and their wish to make their own decisions. We have to work patiently through that," Jones explained.

"If we accept that there will be a zoo and animals in it," Jones added, "then we must try to make it the best that it can be. That means reinforcing its role as a conservation education center in a country that God knows needs it, and making it a pleasant park, which it once was, for mothers and children. There is nothing else like it in Kabul. That why we are trying to get it back under supervision of the Univer-sity of Kabul, which will promote this role, and why we do not want to fritter away money on short-term solutions that will not resolve the real issues. We have about $330,000 remaining in the fund," Jones said, "but it would be very easy to spend all of it sending in armies of experts to solve immediate problems, while getting nowhere for the longterm future."

"Nothing is going to happen quickly," Jones allowed. "The animals are well-fed, despite what Garen says. The Mayhew Animal Home in London have a permanent staff member in Kabul now, with whom we work, who buys and pays for the food every day. Water and electricity have been restored, and some of the larger animals have been moved to the enclosures that are repairable. The Koln Zoo," which originally built the Kabul Zoo, "has had a team there since June, pursuing reconstruction.

"The Germans started to repair the old monkey island there to give the monkeys more room," Jones noted, "but found unexploded mines. The island was used as a dumping site for dud ordinance. The island is high on the list for repair once it has been cleared," Jones said.

"I think the most important point to get across," Jones emphasized, "is that we cannot stop the Kabul Zoo from keeping animals. We do have a chance to make it a place which, over time, might spark some interest in animal care, wildlife and wild places. When it was founded, before all the troubles, it did serve that purpose.