RASC News Agency: Afghanistan continues to reel under a dramatic surge in violent and organized crime, further exposing the deepening security void under Taliban rule. In the latest alarming case, a 12-year-old boy named Ahmad Shah was abducted in broad daylight in Mazar-e-Sharif, capital of Balkh province, as the de facto authorities once again fail to prevent or respond to such incidents. According to local sources, Ahmad Shah, a fifth-grade student at the Afghan-Turk High School and resident of the Karte Noor Khuda neighborhood, was kidnapped on Monday, May 12, while returning home from school. Witnesses report that he was forcibly taken by unidentified assailants driving a license-plate-less Passo vehicle. The perpetrators fled the scene, leaving no trace, and have yet to make any contact with the child’s family. His whereabouts remain unknown, and no progress has been reported in the investigation if any has been launched at all.
This incident is not isolated. It reflects a deeply troubling pattern of rising criminality across Afghanistan, where kidnappings, contract killings, and extortion have become increasingly common, particularly since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Instead of establishing law and order, the Taliban’s governance has plunged the nation into a state of lawlessness, where citizens are left vulnerable and unprotected. Numerous Afghanistani citizens and civil society observers have accused the Taliban of tacitly enabling criminal enterprises. Allegations persist that certain Taliban operatives are directly involved in or complicit with criminal gangs, using their unchecked authority to shield illicit activities from scrutiny and accountability. “We have credible concerns that some members of the Taliban are leveraging their power to cooperate with or profit from these criminal operations,” a community elder in Mazar-e-Sharif told RASC under condition of anonymity.
Despite widespread public outrage and repeated calls for action, Taliban authorities have made no meaningful attempts to crack down on this wave of abductions and violence. The group’s so-called Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice continues to devote its efforts to policing women’s clothing, suppressing free speech, and restricting internet use rather than protecting Afghanistani children from abduction or securing neighborhoods from criminal infiltration. In the absence of a functional judiciary and independent law enforcement, families are left to fend for themselves in an increasingly dangerous and unstable society. Parents are growing fearful of sending their children to school. Community leaders are warning of social collapse. And yet, the Taliban remains fixated on ideological control rather than addressing the spiraling insecurity.
This latest abduction has further inflamed public anxiety and underscores the Taliban’s systemic failure to uphold even the most basic responsibilities of governance. The regime’s obsession with surveillance and repression has come at the cost of public safety, with ordinary citizens paying the price. Until there is a shift toward genuine rule of law and institutional accountability neither of which exist under Taliban rule Afghanistan will remain a haven for criminality, and its most vulnerable like young Ahmad Shah will continue to disappear into silence and impunity.
