Foreign Correspondent: May 6

Tonight on Foreign Correspondent, reporter Sally Sara looks at children groomed by the Taliban in Afghanistan to carry out deadly attacks.

More than 200 children are currently being held in special prisons across Afghanistan, accused of laying mines, deploying improvised explosive devices, assisting in ambushes and preparing for suicide missions. In this extraordinary program filmed for Britain’s Channel 4 and narrated by former Afghanistan correspondent Sally Sara, we go inside a hidden world to meet the Taliban’s child fighters – boys as young as 8 trained for deadly duty.

As Australian, British and U.S forces withdraw the majority of their troops from Afghanistan, they leave behind a country that remains profoundly threatened by the Taliban. Twelve years of war has dented this resolute band of jihadists but it hasn’t broken them, nor their determination to turn as much of this nation as possible over to its uncompromising brand of Islam and Sharia.

In a war that’s seen no end of horror and brutality, one of the more confronting tactics has been the use of children to deploy and operate mines, IED’s and as human bombs dispatched on suicide missions.

In this story from the Channel 4 Dispatches team, child soldiers – many who’ve been abducted or reluctantly conscripted into service for the Taliban tell of being schooled for deadly attack. They are Afghanistan’s Taliban Generation.

Many little boys are easy targets for the Taliban. Most of the children in orphanages have lost their parents to the war.

More than half of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of 18. They have known nothing but conflict and bloodshed. The NATO-supported Afghan government is battling to win over this dominant generation. But children indoctrinated by the Taliban and who’ve suffered or lost loved ones due to the US-led campaign will be hard to reach.

8pm on Tuesdays on ABC1.