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This highly symbolic photograph was chosen years ago for the cover of Newsweek.
It is a raw and direct portrayal of the terrible reality of child soldiers.
We are in Kabul, in 1992 — four years after the Soviet withdrawal — amid the chaos of civil war, fueled by deep ethnic divisions.
The boy, barely twelve years old, had been placed on guard duty in his neighborhood.
His expression speaks volumes: robbed of his childhood, burdened by fear and exhaustion.
He belonged to the Hazara people, one of Afghanistan’s most persecuted ethnic minorities.
Unlike Sharbat Gula, the famed Afghan girl, his facial features reveal his origins — the Hazaras trace their ancestry to Central Asia and have distinct, East Asian traits.
A community never fully accepted in Afghanistan, they have long been marginalized and forced to live in hardship.