Breathless!

(Editor’s Note: Burch, a British reporter, has been covering child recruitment in the Taliban since 2024.)

Kabul, Afghanistan--For the past 30 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been in a struggle with the Taliban to gain control of the Afghan government and restore stability to the war-torn country. In 2021, when NATO forces liberated Kabul and most of northern Afghanistan from Taliban rule once again, the Talibs became desperate and began changing their tactics.

It was soon announced that anyone below the age of 15 was welcomed with open arms within the Taliban regime. Only the top commanders who had ruled since early 2009 were exempted from the age limit.

Afghanistan, currently the country with the highest amount of orphans in the world, had reported over 4,000,000 orphans in 2021. In an effort to enlist more troops, orphanages became a constant site of danger. They were attacked regularly with Plasma Bombs till it was safer for the abandoned children to survive in the streets. Anyone who took in an orphan was guaranteed to be harassed and threatened by Taliban recruiters.

Therefore, the children slowly became even more shunned and isolated by regular society.

Orphans were chased away from doorsteps and beaten savagely when caught stealing food or money. The orphans no longer had a choice whether or not to take part in the war that had robbed them of their parents in the first place.

By 2027, 93% of Taliban soldiers were under the age of 10. Over twenty regimes of 300-400 child combatant groups were spread across Afghanistan and the borders of Pakistan. Photos of NATO led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) fighting against children leaked out into the media.

Outrage arose from the public at the inhumanness of the situation and the world criticized NATO and its actions. The ISAF, once a key component in assisting the Afghan government in extending its authority, was hurting its cause more than helping it.

The following year, over 50,000 foreign troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan by their respective countries.

Now, in 2031, instead of a Taliban insurgency being the main concern of NATO and the rest of the world, an orphan insurgency has become the real issue. Commanding a force of over 2,000,000 children, the Taliban has recently threatened to move the war to other countries such as the United States or Britain, and the international community is at a loss of how to react.

Are the soldiers merely innocent children, forced into a war they didn’t start?

Or are they hardened killing machines that are willing to throw their lives away since they’ve already lost everything?

Reporters like me, who are sent out to seek the truth and find answers to those questions rarely get a glance behind enemy lines. The Taliban are fierce in their attempts at keeping their operations covert. But in March of 2030, a Taliban combatant who served at their biggest base in Kabul contacted me through one of my inside sources.

Hamid’s instructions in his mental mail had been specific. I closed my eyes and activated the wireless communication chip in my brain, and the words appeared before my eyes: meet at the lone cave outside the eastern side of Kabul at 2:20 am. Come no earlier or no later.

He was a frightening sight, all 5-ft.-3 in. of his small frame menacing, his eyes terribly sunken. A part of the fiercest Taliban regime in all of Afghanistan, he fought with a force of over 2,000 that ran the city of Kabul. Without a word, he threw a translating patch at me and motioned for me to smooth it on my forehead.

As he began to speak, his Farsi words transformed from gibberish into perfect English while the patch connected with neurons in my brain and rewired them.

“I have less than 20 minutes. I must be back to before they notice I’m gone.”

“I understand, I’ll hurry,” I coughed, not knowing how to approach the topic.

The Journalist Watch on my wrist buzzed as it recorded our words and transcribed them into notes for later use.

My mouth was dry, but I ignored the feeling. “Hamid, how… did you get in this situation right now?”

“You say that as if I’m the only one in this situation. I’m here the same reason all of us are here. It is because I am an orphan.”

“All I remember… was that I was so hungry..,” he whispered. “My parents had been killed two weeks before in a bombing in Kabul. No one but the Taliban had food to spare for an orphan…”

“The orphans… Are they… what’s given the Taliban the strength they have now?”

“You’re correct,” Hamid answered. “Right now, it’s mainly run by children… almost all of them, orphans… We have become weapons that NATO is afraid to fight against; shields for the Taliban, for their cause.”

A violent shiver tore through me at his last words, but interest betrayed me and gained control.

“The Taliban knew… that’s why they changed the age requirements… Isn’t it? But no one thought… no one could’ve expected that so many would join the war…”

“If orphans didn’t exist… no normal child would join the Taliban,” he agreed solemnly. “The training is brutal and the chance of death is high. They would have no army. But orphans are frantic to join. Right now, we make up more than 40% of the population in Afghanistan, and there’s nowhere for us to go…”

Vividly, I recalled the countless children I saw wandering the streets in other Afghan cities, their faces sickeningly emaciated. They lacked the basic needs of parasite collars and antibiotic-supplying head bands that would’ve kept them healthy.

“The Taliban know we’ll follow their every will without question. We’re desperate. Since we’ve already lost everything, we have nothing to cry for like children with parents do. If we don’t listen and the Taliban kick us out, unlike them, orphans don’t have a home to run back to. We’ll starve.”

“Any life, even one with the Taliban, is better than a life on the streets,” Hamid sighed, his eyes aimless. “Everyone in Afghanistan knows the only chance of survival for an orphan is the Taliban”

I paused before quietly whispering, “Why are you telling me all this? You must know the risk if they find out about our meeting…”

His voice was tentative when he finally spoke, and I saw the child inside that was hidden behind a war-built mask of maturity.

“I first joined the Taliban, not only because I was hungry… but I was angry… at my own powerlessness. I thought joining the Taliban, the ones who threw the plasma bombs in the first place… would give me power.”

“But the longer I stayed in the Taliban, the more I realized how powerless it made me. I’m ordered around like a dog, to steal, to threaten… to kill. And what I am fighting for… is completely wrong. Many are now orphans because of me, and one day they’ll join the Taliban because of that reason… It’s a never-ending cycle.”

“I’m telling you all this… because I want to stop the cycle. I need you to tell the world our story… so that change can happen. So that orphanages can be rebuilt and orphans can be given hope from somewhere other than the Taliban… Please… help me.”

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Author’s Note: Three weeks after our meeting, I received a message from one of my inside sources in Kabul. I was told two days after seeing me, the commander of the base had discovered one of my messages in Hamid’s brain chip. Before they could trace it to me, Hamid deleted it and refused to disclose any information.

He faced the worst punishment: mental torture and then complete isolation in the brain by one of the Taliban’s worst weapons, the Cognitive Controller. With 1/3 of his neurons deactivated, Hamid lived two weeks in complete darkness until he finally starved.

He was only 1 of 150,000 child combatants that have died so far this year.

The Orphan Insurgency