00:00:26
This is Challey refugee camp in the North of the country, and it’s been here now for seventeen years, enduring testament to Afghanistan’s wars.
00:00:36
Originally there were tents here, now - mud hovels. Challey’s taken on an air of permanence like the Palestinian camps of Lebanon except poverty and despair here is on an all-together different level.
00:00:51
Sadiqa, a wealthy woman from Kabul, has made a long journey up here with an agent; Nagis.
00:01:00
Sadiqa, in the leather coat, has come shopping. Our team will have to move carefully here, its not clear they’ll be able to film…….because Sadiqa has come to buy a child.
00:01:16
A boy, obviously, nobody wants a girl.
00:01:20
And in the desperate poverty of Challey refugee camp, Nek Mohammad is willing to sell a son. It is the only way he can feed the other children through the coming winter.
00:01:35
She wants to buy Qassem, who is 8 years old. Nagis, the agent, has already bought one of Qassem’s brothers.
00:01:47
The father, Nek Mohammad, begs to know how that boy’s doing in Kabul.
00:01:52
‘He’s fine’
00:01:52
they say, and Sadiqa
00:01:59
‘Say your goodbyes now, its time to go’
00:02:01
she says.
00:02:18
At this point our translator had to ask, ‘Surely this is wrong?’
00:02:27
‘Yes, you are right, it’s cruel. But I have two aims here; to give this boy a bright future and a good education and to save their other children. The winter is coming and they need money so the children don’t die of hunger.’
00:02:47
The going rate for an Afghanistan boy today, $1500
00:02:54
‘I sold a piece of my heart to stop my four other children dying of hunger. I don’t have an elder son, I’m also sick, my kidney is failing, my body is in pain.’
00:03:07
Sadiqa and her agent Nagis, were happy to be named but not shown. Nagis has brokered the deal.
00:03:17
‘This is the second child they’re selling, because of the problems they face. We can’t stand this either’.
00:03:24
Here the question Afghans ask everywhere is “What happened to all the aid the West poured into this country?” Seven years of massive intervention and Afghans still live with their toilet and kitchen in the same space.
00:03:42
As one farmer put it, trying to scrape a living in the drought-stricken fields…
00:03:48
‘People are going to Iran and Pakistan, or joining the Taliban, because they’re poor and don’t have a future’.
00:03:55
You don’t have far to go to find the Taliban. Just a few miles from the refugee camp, Mulla Meshe, Taliban commander and landowner, has a queue of people lining up with their problems. An MP’s surgery perhaps, Taliban style. Only he’s not elected, of course, and you only get heard if your complaint is written down on new Taliban stationary. ‘The Islamic emirate of Afghanistan’, it says
00:04:21
So here you have it. The much-talked-about Parallel Taliban-istan, gradually spreading across the country and why? “Because you can’t get government officials to do anything without endless????and corruption”, they say.
00:04:37
‘I’m serving my people in the name of God. Because the government is not helping, people are turning their backs on them. Everyone is coming to us. It’s an honour to serve our people.’
00:04:48
People like Jalal who is blind and has a dispute over some land, so he’s come here because he trusts the Taliban to sort it more than the government and there are many, many Afghans like Jalal.
00:05:02
Even so, the Taliban here repay this public trust with public extortion. Just a few feet away, they’re taking money for electricity. The Taliban can’t control the supply, but they can cut you off if you don’t pay up. They have a list.
00:05:20
Lawlessness, though, isn’t the sole preserve of the countryside. Our teams come south to Kabul, a city plagued by endless kidnappings. Even here in the capital, the government is so feeble, that abduction is big business.
00:05:37
Police special forces, anxious to show they’re doing something, say they have intelligence that two young hostages are being held by a gang in the suburbs.
00:05:48
They set up a raid, here’s the plan; This woman will pose as a beggar and knock at the door. The theory is, with women around, they won’t open fire.
00:06:10
And on this occasion, it all seems to go like clockwork.
00:06:17
Three kidnappers marched out at gunpoint. Moments later two terrified and bewildered hostages, both – we’re told – sons of prominent businessmen, lured from their homes and seized. There are scores of kidnaps around Kabul every year. The police say these two had been held for almost three weeks.
00:06:43
Homuna Sefe is never far from his Kalashnikov these days. One of the country’s most prominent hostages - a cousin of the former king in Afghanistan, he was kidnapped and held in this well with another hostage for ten days.
00:07:02
‘One of the kidnappers told me they wanted money. I told them “I am not a businessman. I’m not working for the government. I don’t have property.” His answer was very brutal. He said “when we cut off your finger and send it to your family, we’ll find your property and your money’.
00:07:19
Police in Kabul reckon at least 30 people are currently abducted. Setting up a meeting with kidnappers is obviously dangerous and unpredictable. It’s almost unheard-of for such people to talk openly, still less show off their operation. Channel 4 News gained such access after weeks of negotiation.
00:07:39
And here is Matim Khan. The hair’s a badge of status for bandits. You are now in the heart of an ongoing kidnap in a suburb of Kabul. The penalty, if Khan is caught, is death. He’s keen to try and justify himself.
00:07:58
‘We are not dealing with poor people. We’re only going to kidnap people who’ve taken foreign money from all over the world, but who have kept it for themselves. We will kidnap their children. You see their six-year-olds, sitting in the back seat of a Lexus, the latest model. The model people abroad can’t even afford. So we kidnap their children to get the money off their families. The money they have stolen.’
00:08:26
Moments later, he showed off an Afghan teenager held hostage right here, in this suburb of Kabul.
00:08:35
‘Is this him?’
00:08:36
‘yes, this is him.’
00:08:41
‘If you don’t get the money, what would you do with him’
00:08:45
‘We’ll sell him, or take his eyes out, and bring him to the eye hospital and call his relatives. Or, we’ll sell him to the Taliban.’
00:08:54
Apparent proof here of what’s been so widely rumoured. The link between criminal gangs and the Taliban.
00:09:02
‘How much will the Taliban pay’
00:09:04
‘They’ll pay what we want. Your time’s up now. Go away.’
00:09:10
The interview was over. Children for sale, the Taliban’s parallel government and the booming kidnap business, all of them fuelled by corruption, lawlessness and the desperate need to get money, anything considered. It is the essence of what Afghanistan has crumbled to. And the hostage? Well the kidnappers said his father was rich.