TIME Magazine Asia November 5, 2018 Back Issue

WHEN WAR COMES HOME
In 2008, Hamisha Gul moved his family from a neighboring district controlled by the Taliban so his children could receive an education. “Boys as young as 8 years old were carrying weapons and wearing bandoliers of bullets,” he said, outside his home in May. He feared that if they didn’t leave, his boys would fall under the sway of the fighters. By 2014, the war had come home. Their village in Surkh Rod district had become a no-man’s-land
between a government-controlled highway and the Taliban’s Black Mountain, so named because snow never falls there. That year, international forces handed responsibility for the country’s security back to the Afghan government, and the Taliban started attacking Afghan soldiers
stationed on the highway. Local elders pleaded with both sides to avoid battles near their homes. The fighters agreed, but nothing changed.