RASC News Agency: A 12-year-old boy was tragically killed in Kabul after a violent altercation between two Taliban fighters erupted into a public shootout yet another grim reminder of the deteriorating security landscape under Taliban rule, even in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital. According to multiple local sources, the deadly incident took place on Monday evening, June 23, near the busy traffic junction close to Kabul International Airport, located in the 10th police district. The incident stemmed from a verbal argument between two Taliban members that swiftly escalated into an armed confrontation amidst dozens of bystanders.
An eyewitness who spoke to RASC on condition of anonymity recounted the chaotic scene:
“The two Taliban fighters began shouting at each other. It seemed like a petty dispute, but soon both pulled out their pistols and opened fire. One of the bullets struck a child who was standing nearby. He collapsed instantly and died on the spot.” The victim, reportedly a child laborer from a poverty-stricken household in District Nine, had been working near the roadside, helping passengers find rides like many other children forced onto the streets due to the country’s crushing economic collapse.
Following the shooting, both Taliban gunmen sustained minor injuries and were detained by their own forces. However, no further information has been released regarding their identities, motives, or any disciplinary measures being taken. Taliban security agencies have launched what they claim to be an internal investigation, but observers remain deeply skeptical of any meaningful accountability, given the group’s habitual evasion of justice for its own members. Despite the gravity of the incident, the Taliban’s official spokesmen have refused to comment publicly. The silence, critics argue, reflects the regime’s discomfort with addressing internal disorder, incompetence, and the increasingly visible fracturing of control among its armed ranks.
This incident is far from isolated. Analysts and human rights advocates have long warned that the Taliban’s militarization of urban life, combined with the absence of professional security training and legal oversight, poses a growing danger to civilians especially children. Kabul and other major cities have been effectively transformed into armed encampments, patrolled by poorly disciplined fighters with little understanding of civilian policing or conflict de-escalation. “This is not law enforcement. This is armed rule by ideological militias,” said one security expert in Kabul. “The Taliban have turned the capital into a zone of arbitrary violence where no one not even children is safe.”
While the Taliban tout their rule as a return to “order,” such deadly altercations between their own forces paint a drastically different picture one of disorganization, unaccountability, and rising instability. The tragic death of a child, caught in the crossfire of Taliban infighting, underscores the regime’s complete failure to protect even the most vulnerable. Civil society organizations have repeatedly raised alarms over the Taliban’s inability to manage its security forces and its refusal to implement proper command structures or mechanisms of civilian protection. Despite their assertions of governance, the Taliban continue to operate as an armed movement, rather than a state, and their rule has led to an escalation of lawlessness rather than its containment.
As of the time of publication, the identity of the child victim has not been officially released. Local residents confirm he was from a destitute family living in west Kabul, and had been working to help support his household like thousands of other children left behind by a collapsing economy and an uncaring regime.
