BIJELJINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — "His mother begged me to find his body, so that his family could give him a proper funeral at home, in Afghanistan," says Stana Gul Ahmadzai, age 32, of Kabul. "But I had no idea where to start."

Ajmal's mother is a widow. Her 17-year-old son, Ajmal, drowned in the Drina, a river marking the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, on July 31, 2022. It was one stage of a trek that would put him closer to his dream: to help his mother and two sisters by finding work in one of the wealthier countries of the European Union (EU).

The teenager decided to leave after the Taliban took over in August 2021. "Even people who studied could not get jobs, only Islamic scholars," says Ahmadzai. "It was also the prospect of living in a country without freedom of speech, that made him decide to make that difficult journey."

With the help of human traffickers in Turkey, Ajmal ended up in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a mountainous nation in the Western Balkans — part of a popular route to Western Europe because migrants believe that border police in Bosnia — a non-EU country — aren't as likely to target migrants who enter illegally as they are in the neighboring country Croatia, which is in the EU.

Read more at NPR here.