“…one of the worst ever humanitarian crises is hitting today’s Afghanistan.” – stated UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during an interview. But what he certainly didn’t highlight was the catastrophe inflicted upon the Afghan children, who are now compelled to opt a path that is ready to take their lives at any given moment. The Afghan children have taken up on smuggling!
Innumerable Afghan children are hiding under the lorries going from Afghanistan to Pakistan to smuggle commodities like sweets and cigarettes, cross-nationally. Keeping their life at a stake and courage at their peak, these children are illegally crossing country borders just so that their family doesn’t sleep hungry that night. They find it easier to risk their lives, rather than starving themselves to death.
Hiding themselves in the undercarriages of lorries dispatching sweets and other easily sellable commodities, dozens of children in Afghanistan, are regularly crossing the borders in a fairly dangerous way, only to be able to sell certain things devoid of customs duty so that the customer also finds some incentive in buying those, and so do the ineligible yet compelled immature sellers. ‘Misery accompanies maturity’, they say, this somewhere does stand true in the case of Afghanistan where children who should be worrying about their poetry recitation competition at school, are devising ways to match their velocity with that of the moving truck so that they can insert their small and flexible bodies ‘inside’ it.
“It is poverty and my father’s deteriorating health that has forced me and many like me to take up this activity. It is better to earn rather than stay idle all day, isn’t it? The suppliers strike a deal with us, we are instructed about the pickup and drop down location and after we fulfil our duty, we get our receipts.” – says one of the child smugglers. Apparently, after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other of its neighbouring countries have tightened their border security, making it an extremely difficult task for the adults to sneak in, but for the children, it is a rather ‘easy’ activity to befool the immigration and custom protocol.
It is certainly after the Taliban-sponsored turmoil that things have assumed such an extreme dimension. The Taliban fighters do see these dozens of children, every day clinging on to the moving lorries, but do not take any action to even stop them.
“Fortunately, I have never been hurt while getting in and out of the trucks’ undercarriages, but a few days back, a girl succumbed to death because she committed the mistake of hiding beside the truck’s engine. She did undergo surgery but eventually, she died.
I never commit that mistake.” – commented a ten-year-old boy, showcasing his expertise in the said chain of activities. Most of the time the sacks carried by these small children are bigger than their size, but they do carry the load, at the shocking age of 7-8.
The Afghan children undoubtedly are the most awful victims of the decades-long military conflict in their land. The repercussions of illegally crossing international borders, hiding not on the lorries but inside it, and the constant danger surmounting their heads are somewhat acquainted with them, but it is their undying urge to economically support their families in these trying times that pushes them to undertake such tasks.
The border officers from Pakistan regularly send back such children when they notice them, but only to see them coming in the next lorry, hiding their faces with eyes shut inside the undercarriages and mudguards, with a ray of hope that maybe this time they’ll earn a little.
