KABUL—Mohammad Yaser Qubadian was two years old and playing with toys when his father was killed by a Taliban roadside bomb in 2004. As a child, Qubadian used to wake up in the middle of the night, visit his father’s grave, read the Quran, and weep until morning. Fourteen years later, the family gravesite grew. One evening in August, 2018, an Islamic State suicide bomber walked into a local educational center. Qubadian picked up the dead body of his sister from the ashes and went home covered in blood.
“I was too young for such tragedies. The war has taken away everything from me,” said Qubadian, now the vice president of War Victims Centered-Peace Community, a national group for civilian victims of the war. “I have no reason to live, expect demanding justice.”
