Few days ago, two children---a six year old girl and her brother (five years old) --- were kidnapped from eastern part of Kabul city. The abductors called their family and asked for a ransom of 50,000 US dollar. But before getting the money, the criminals killed the boy and raped six year old girl. The intelligence officials, in a statement, said that they arrested nine individuals on the basis of involvement in the crime. According to the statement three of the nine individuals who are arrested are the main culprits and the rest are their supporters. The photo of the child who was murdered was pasted in social media by National Security Directorate (NSD), which sparked hatred against such inhumane criminal activities. A close study of the crime reflects that how morality has deteriorated during past few decades and there are fears that the previous barbaric activities may be strengthened in our society once again and the society may experience such crimes that happened previously under the control of Mojaheedin. At the same time there are certain people who argue that Taliban have not remained the same Taliban, they have undergone basic changes in their attitude and ideology and they do not have any intention to bring about a similar establishment similar to the one during 1996-2001.

Nonetheless, the murder of an innocent child and rape of small girl for the sake of money reflected how degraded our social values and practices have become and how we ourselves are welcoming the era of Taliban. Our country is filled with abhorrent and barbaric individuals who love to take the society to the same era and if they see even small leakage in the system and any possibility, they will become active and will soon inflame the hidden brimstone of communal war. Afterwards, the chain of violence will resurge to the society and keep on going on.

Another key reason behind such filthy activities is poverty and high unemployment rate. The robbers demanded for USD 50,000 from the family of kidnapped children, which shows that they wanted to get a large sum of money through shortcut means. It is deemed that poverty is the main reason behind most of such crimes. Since last year, as the foreign military withdrawal has become certain, many NGOs have already pulled out and there are many that may pull out of the country. The employment has become so high. For each announced position in an organization, there are numerous number of people who apply and there are only few who get selected, while the most remain unemployed.

Unfortunately, billions of dollars spent to reconstruct the country ended up to pockets of influential figures. According to reports released by domestic and international media, key beneficial and productive portions of the economy is manipulated by entrepreneurs who have used their influence in government to pull out rivals out of the economic battlefield. Such manipulation deal billions of dollars loss to civilians who just struggle to survive.

Nobody can reject that current economic condition of people are far better or even comparable to pre-2001; meanwhile, the poverty has remained so widespread. The double digit economic growth since 2001 has not meaning lower and middle class of people. They rarely have benefited from such foreign-donation-run economic growth. Major part of the people still cut their daily food ration in order to send their children to school.

Additionally, Unemployment is not only prevalent among labors but also among high educated individuals who wander around for job after graduation. Only last year, it was a common expression among graduated boys that “girls can easily get a job while the story is not true for boys because NGOs and public departments should try to consider the gender equality in terms of their recruitment. But the situation has deteriorated so much that those who have university degrees search over six months for job. The girls are also not exceptional anymore. Such high level of unemployment forces people to commit crimes for a living. Big cities, particularly will become ripe for criminal activities. Seemingly, the security forces can also be of no use to eradicate crimes unless people help them. People may get silenced receiving warnings from criminals. And also the prisons may get loaded with huge number of criminals but still crimes continue happening. That on one hand imposes huge unnecessary costs on public budget and on the other hand deprives the society from human resource it needs the most.

Therefore, the kidnap of two small children indeed display an abhorrent barbarity of human beings, but similar cases have a lot to do with the poverty. Indeed, no one should expect a man whose children cry of hunger but he sees no option to feed them. Our officials should deal with the root causes of crimes – the high employment rate and deterioration of security establishments. Presently, neither Afghan private sectors nor government has the capacity to improve domestic or indigenous sectors. Hence, officials should develop closer relation with international community and neighboring countries in order to ensure that foreign support wouldn’t stop and the economy continues to grow.