He is 17 years old and does not know how to carry a weapon

The plight of an Afghan teenager recruited by the Taliban against his will

Taliban fighters do not hesitate to recruit children to fight.

EPA

When the Taliban arrived on Sunday in his northern Afghan city of Kunduz, 17-year-old Abdullah did not expect the insurgents to recruit him to fight alongside them by force.

Like thousands of Afghans looking for safety, the teenager arrived in Kabul after fleeing the massive attack led by the "Taliban", during which it managed with lightning speed to control half of the capitals of the provinces, within eight days, and reach the outskirts of the capital.

Abdullah, while sheltering in the shade of a tent that has become his family's shelter in a northern suburb of the capital, recounts terrifying details from his last day when Kunduz was besieged, and says that he knew, on Sunday morning, that the Taliban fighters would not be late in arriving at his place of residence.

A short time later, he found himself only in the hands of the rebels, who stopped him in the street and escorted him to a nearby hill to supply him with weapons, a bag full of RPGs on his back, weighing more than 20 kg, and an ammunition box in each hand.

(Abdullah), who has pimples on his face and wears traditional Afghani blue dress, says that during his time with the insurgents, he met the students of a Quranic school near the city, and the movement recruited 30 to 40 young men, some of whom were barely 14 years old.

He says that they "asked them to take up arms and join their ranks, and when their families came to demand their liberation, they were threatened with weapons."

Abdullah's ordeal lasted three hours before his relatives came and were able to convince the Taliban to leave him. Then the family decided to flee, and he went to inform his grandfather about the matter.

Arrested again

But the insurgents were on his guard again. Four "Pakistani" fighters, he said, according to their dialect, arrested him and took him again to prepare him for fighting.

"We were beaten," he says, "I have traces" of bruises on his body.

An hour later, the boy, who used to work with his father in a barbershop, was carrying an M16 assault rifle, the US military's assault rifle, and headed with the rebels to the front, where they were attacking police offices.

He recalls those moments, saying, “I was trembling and could not hold my rifle,” he who had never participated in the fighting or carried a weapon in his life.

Being on the frontline was not easy, and he says: "There was aerial bombardment and tanks firing," pointing out that "three or four boys who were carrying rifles were wounded, and then they were killed after their bags exploded."

The bombing also resulted in the “killing of one of the (Taliban) members and the loss of another leg and arm,” according to (Abdullah).

under shock

He (Abdullah) says: “I was really scared. I thought about my parents and said to myself: If I am injured and killed, what will happen to them?”

With half of the group that had taken him killed and wounded, he found an opportunity to escape, decided to throw the gun and ran away, and it took about an hour to reach his neighborhood, and he says, “I was in shock, I wasn’t even able to recognize our door, when I got to home, I wasn’t even sure I was still alive.”

After his arrival, the family prepared to leave in a hurry, borrowed some money and sold his mother's mobile phone in order to pay for the trip to Kabul. As it was bombed by mortar shells flattened.

After a 15-hour journey, he finally arrived in Kabul with his parents, grandfather, two sisters and three brothers, the youngest of whom was two and a half years old.

Since then, the family sleeps on the floor, with nothing but their clothes, the next day a passerby throws a blanket over them.

With his country stuck between fire and blood, Abdullah's only hope is to travel, but his sick mother's situation worries him.

Since that fateful day, his stomach aches have not left him, after he received blows from the "butts of the guns" of the "Taliban" rebels, which makes him unable to eat until this moment.

After his country is caught between fire and blood, Abdullah's only hope is to travel, but the condition of his sick mother worries him.

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