At the age of just 11, Emran has lived through more horrors than most will endure in a lifetime. A new documentary, War Child, follows him and other children stranded in this dystopia

Shot at, beaten, starved: the child refugees who will stop at nothing to reach Europe

The sun beats down and the cicadas sing all around us.

“Why did you leave home?” I ask as we tread through the long grass.

“The Taliban were killing children as they walked to school, so I had to leave.”

I follow the boy’s lead as we creep past razor wire bunched at the foot of a gleaming silver fence.

“Two years ago my parents sent my older brother to Germany, to safety. They didn’t have enough money for everyone to go. Now I’m 11, it’s my turn.”

I’m exploring the Greek-Macedonian border with Emran, a charismatic young Afghan boy, filming him for a Channel 4 documentary – War Child. Three months ago, he left his parents in Kabul and made his way towards Western Europe. He almost drowned when the outboard motor on his dinghy failed as he crossed from Turkey to Greece. By some miracle, a fishing boat saw his dinghy and alerted the coastguard. “It was so scary,” Emran tells me. “I can’t swim.”

“Now I’m stuck here on the Greek border,” he says. But he stubbornly maintains that he “must keep going forward”.

Emran is streetwise beyond his years, super-smart and speaks near-perfect English. He is travelling with his extended family and must be on his best behaviour as the last thing he wants is to isolate himself. So far, this 11-year-old has travelled 5,500km without his parents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The Taliban were killing children as they walked to school, so I had to leave’ … Emran. Photograph: Channel 4

Back at the border, he points through the fence to a group of overweight patrol guards, sunning themselves on the steps of a tank. “I know those soldiers. Each night when we try to cross this border they catch us and bring us back. They beat my friend with batons, they thought he was a smuggler.”

Emran is staying in a tatty dome tent that he’s pitched on the Idomeni railway tracks. Idomeni is an informal refugee camp on the Greek-Macedonian border. Bomber-jacketed police line the border gates, tooled up and ready to repel migrants in case they decide to push forward.

In the daytime it’s sweltering. Diarrhoea is rife, sanitation awful. Fights break out in the food lines due to shortages, desperation and fatigue.

Each night, when the light begins to die, charity workers and press slink away to their guesthouses. This is when the smugglers begin their business and the camp comes alive. People furiously pack their rucksacks, preparing for another clandestine border crossing.

A hundred metres along the tracks, in an abandoned station building, a makeshift bar sells snacks, cigarettes and beer. Inside, 20 smugglers drink heavily, joking with the unlicensed bartender. The atmosphere quickly changes, escalating to a full-on brawl. An aggressor pulls out an eight-inch knife. He’s blind drunk but very strong. He grapples and lurches, then the barman lands a Hollywood punch on the knifeman’s jaw that sends him crashing through a flimsy trestle table. Every night there are fights like this.

Emran stands timidly at the door. He’s come to buy biscuits with the last of his money, stocking up for tonight’s border crossing. “Nobody trusts the smugglers but we must go with them. Some are good, but others are very dangerous.” Emran has attempted this crossing 14 times now.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Smugglers threatened to shoot a child every day unless Rawan’s family could get them more money. Photograph: Channel 4

The danger is cruelly demonstrated in the story of another young refugee, Rawan; a bright eyed 12-year-old girl from Aleppo in Syria. Rawan’s father engaged smugglers who promised to take their young family to Serbia for €800. They walked for days until they reached a concrete compound in the hills of northern Macedonia. The smugglers then threatened to shoot a child every day unless the family could secure more money.

They barely ate or drank for days. Rawan’s father finally managed to contact his brother in Turkey who wired through the cash for their kidnappers. I meet Rawan and her family as they surface in Belgrade. Hurt, exhausted, thin, weak and frightened, Rawan’s father is dumbfounded. “We fled Daesh, but these smugglers are no different. We didn’t think we’d meet people like this in Europe.”

Emran narrowly avoided a similar fate, instead escaping into the dense Macedonian forests where he hid from smugglers and police for three days. He drank river water and ate berries to survive. He eventually rendezvoused with another smuggler who delivered him by car to Belgrade.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We fled Daesh, but these smugglers are no different’ … Rawan in hiding – exhausted, weak and afraid. Photograph: Channel 4

Not far from where these harrowing dramas are playing out, middle-class tourists rent rustic holiday homes, and restaurants serve delicious local cuisine to the wealthy clientele. It’s a stark reminder that this is contemporary Europe, not some cruel dystopia.

For these children, this is just a single leg of their epic journeys – in Emran’s case, a trip that will last 7,000km. He speaks to his father as often as he’s able to charge his phone. “You are an honour and a good boy,” I hear his father encourage him. Emran’s dad is desperate for his son to reunite with his brother and find safety in Germany. Emran admits that if his parents had known the borders would close, they would never have sent him.

There are thousands of vulnerable unaccompanied children stranded in Europe without their families. Shockingly, over 10,000 are believed to have gone missing over the past two years alone. Without safe and legal routes, I’ve seen how vulnerable these children are to sexual and criminal exploitation. When borders close, it’s boom time for smugglers, traffickers and gangs. Every step of the way this vulnerable, good-natured child is in danger.

In Europe, we currently live in the second richest economy in the world. Surely there is space within our society for those, like Emran, who are most in need.

War Child is on Channel 4 on Sunday at 10.30pm.

