The Afghan Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday that the country's intelligence forces prevented 13 Afghan children from being taken to Pakistan and trained to be terrorists.
According to the ministry, terrorists intended to take the children to the Khyber Agency in Pakistan's Balochistan province to provide them terrorism training after deceiving their families, but the Afghan security forces prevented it from happening.
"Our country is in a state of war, in a state of - unfortunately - obvious aggression; when a society is in a state of war, its obvious that calamities and catastrophes are widespread as well," said Justice Minister Fazel Ahmad Manawi.
The radicalization of children in Pakistani religious schools is a constant concern for Afghan leaders and regional and international analysts.
The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations stated that another 67 children who were being smuggled by human traffickers and migrants out of the country in border areas between Iran and Afghanistan were detained by Iranian border guards and handed over to Afghan security forces.
Zabiullah Rahmatzadeh, director of immigration at the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations, said: “These people were going to Iran from Nimroz via Zahedan; fortunately, we handed them back to their families.”
Numbers provided by the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations show that in the last four months more than 70 people, including six women and three children who were about to be taken out of the country by human traffickers, have been rescued by Afghan police forces.
Zahir Farahi, the Interior Ministry's director of the human trafficking department, said: “They had made fake visas, photo-changed passports, fake passports, and generally fake ID cards for them, and they wanted to get them out illegally either through the air or across open borders.”
Members of the Afghan government's High Commission to Combat Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants held a conference on Monday to discuss the US State Department's recent report on human trafficking.
According to the US State Department’s report, Afghanistan is among the 17 countries that have failed to meet the minimum standards set for the prevention of human trafficking.
The State Department has warned that the 17 countries’ efforts in fighting human trafficking have been insufficient and unsatisfying and this could lead to sanctions by the United States against these countries.