Haron was five years old when he began working on the streets of Kabul. Now 11, he sells socks from a woven basket and carries a small scale so people can weigh themselves. On a good day, he makes 200 afghanis, just enough to feed his six-person family, which includes his paralyzed father and a mother who is not allowed to work outside the home.
Haron dreams of going to school like other children but he knows that is not possible, given his responsibilities to provide for his family. These days, his greatest fear is not hunger. It is the Taliban. He has been detained six times since last winter.
Haron is among a growing number of children who are being pushed onto the streets by hunger that threaten close to 23 million people in Afghanistan, including 12 million children, according to UNICEF. Once on the streets, they are targeted by the Taliban and their long-running campaign of “rounding up beggars.” With more than 800,000 children expected to be deported to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan in this year alone, the number of vulnerable children on the streets is surging — and so is the danger they face.
Zan Times talked to some of these children who have been arrested by the Taliban, who spoke of their experiences of arrest, forced labour, and brutal beatings by Taliban forces. Some have spent up to 15 nights in the prison. The children recount similar stories, revealing a pattern of violence inside detention centres like Badam Bagh, where boys as young as nine describe seeing heads split open as result of beatings.
Haron remembers each of his six arrests. The first time was in Pul-e-Sorkh. “I was selling socks when several Talibs called me,” he says. “When I went to them, they put me in their Ranger and took me to prison.” He spent 15 days in detention. His parents searched for him throughout the first night, until finding other street children who told them he had been taken by the Taliban.
From his experiences and those of other street beggars, Haron tells Zan Times how the crackdown works in Kabul: children, both beggars and street workers, are first taken to Badam Bagh, a women’s prison which now also houses children. He says some of the children have been transferred from Badam Bagh to Qasaba. Two of Haron’s friends, Murtaza and Nasir, “are still missing” after being moved to Qasaba, he says.
The campaign to “round up beggars” got a boost in April 2024, when the Taliban’s leader approved the Law on Collecting Beggars and Preventing Begging. Under this law, anyone who has “enough food for one day” is considered a criminal if found begging.
The commission tasked with implementing the law is led by the counter-narcotics deputy of the Taliban’s Interior Ministry. In October 2024, its leader told state-run Afghanistan National Radio and Television that authorities had rounded up around 58,000 beggars across the country, including large numbers of children. The broadcast showed rows of frightened children, some seemingly no older than five, staring directly into the camera.
Officials said detainees are categorized as “destitute,” “professional,” or “networked,” and that their biometric data has been collected and was being stored in a database. Those suspected of being “professional” and “networked” face punishment, they say.
According to Haron and other children interviewed by Zan Times, conditions in Badam Bagh are harsh and violent. “They made us clean the walls,” the 11-year-old says, describing the forced labour imposed on children upon their arrival at the detention facility. Children who disobey or “work too slowly,” he says, are transferred to Qasaba.
He remembers hearing the screams of women, too. “Women beggars were also brought there,” he says. “We could hear the sound of them being beaten.” Haron and two other detained children describe watching boys beaten until their skulls split open. “One boy was beaten so badly that his eye burst,” Haron recalls. Only one doctor was present in the prison. While the physician would dress wounds, no detainee was allowed to access outside medical care.
Food was scarce: One loaf of dry bread and one bowl of lentils was shared among three people every 24 hours. “None of us was full,” he says.
During intake, Taliban forces forcibly fingerprinted and photographed the children. “They grabbed us by the collar for biometrics,” Haron says. “They said they would give us aid cards, but they gave us nothing.” They also confiscated the children’s belongings and pocket money. “They took everything,” he says. “When we were released, they gave nothing back.”
This investigation follows earlier Zan Times reporting about how a woman detained for “begging” witnessed the death of two children in Taliban custody. She told Zan Times that guards beat the boys with cables “until they died,” recalling how detainees were threatened with beatings if they protested or spoke.
The Taliban’s own law appears to anticipate detainees dying in custody. Article 25 of the 2024 law outlines burial procedures for anyone who dies in detention without relatives to claim the body.
For many families, hunger at home leaves them with no option but to send their children into the streets, even though they risk being arrested by the Taliban. Esmat, a nine-year-old child worker in Kabul, spent 10 days in Badam Bagh. He was released after his parents pleaded with Taliban officials and signed a guarantee. “They told us not to work on the streets anymore,” he says. But neither he nor his parents received assistance.
Salima has to send her 12-year-old son out to collect garbage because she isn’t allowed to work and her husband disappeared 12 years ago. “Sometimes my boy cries,” she tells Zan Times. “People beat him. It is very hard to send him out with a cart to search through the trash. But I have no other way.” No aid agency or Taliban office has offered her help.
The pressure on families is mounting throughout Afghanistan. According to Save the Children, children have been deported to Afghanistan from Iran at the rate of one child every 30 seconds. Thousands of these children arrive alone and many were born abroad and have never lived in AfghanistanThey return to a country struggling with severe hunger, mass internal displacement, earthquakes and climate-driven droughts in the north that are destroying crops and drying up water sources.
In Kandahar, 12-year-old Ali says his family of 13 was forcibly returned from Karachi six months ago. His father is paralyzed, making Ali the main breadwinner. “I leave home at five in the morning and stay out until eleven at night,” he says. He collects cans in a sack. “I earn 60 to 70 afghanis a day. We buy dry bread. Sometimes we sleep hungry. Our rent is 2,500 afghanis and we are always in debt.”
Fifteen child workers interviewed by Zan Times in Kabul, Kandahar, and Jawzjan say they are the primary providers for their families.
One of those children is Ahmed, 11, who sells sambusas on the streets of Sheberghan. His father went to Iran after the Taliban takeover and his family has not heard from him since then. Unable to afford medical treatment for a leg injury, Ahmed ekes out a living on the street, surviving on 60 afghanis a day. “I want to grow up and go to Iran to find my father,” he says.
Like Ahmed, 12-year-old Saboor lives in Sherberghan. He collects cans alongside his two younger brothers. “There are too many boys collecting now,” he says. “When someone throws a can, all the boys run.” His father also left for Iran and never returned. “We always wear people’s old clothes,” he says. He dreams of going to school and of his malnourished sister becoming healthy again.
Afghanistan is now a country where the youngest and poorest are trapped between hunger at home and violence on the streets. Child workers — already burdened with supporting their families — face arrest, forced labour, and the risk of disappearance in Taliban custody.
For Haron, each day brings the same fear. He keeps selling socks, hoping the Rangers will not stop for him again.
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Mahtab Safi is the pseudonym of a Zan Times journalist in Afghanistan. Sana Atef and Hura Omar contributed to this report.
