RUTHFULLY YOURS

KABUL: The Taliban are recruiting a growing number of children as suicide bombers as NATO steps up its war against the insurgents. In some of the country’s most restive provinces, the Taliban are resorting to threats, inducement and deceit in order to send children to their deaths against US and Afghan targets.

A 14-year-old boy has explained how he came close to blowing himself up at a US military base two weeks ago. The Taliban gave Noor Mohammad a simple choice – either they would cut off his hand for stealing or he could redeem himself and bring glory on his family by becoming a suicide bomber.

Held in Taliban custody in a different village from his parents, after allegedly stealing mobile phones during a wedding party in his village, the boy went for the second option. He was soon being given basic lessons in how to use a gun, with which he would shoot the guards at a nearby US military base in Ghazni, a violent south-eastern province.

He was also fitted with a suicide vest that covered his torso with explosives. He was told that when inside the base he should touch two trailing wires together, killing himself and as many American and Afghan soldiers as possible. Having kitted the soon-to-be martyr out in his outfit, the insurgents took photos and sent him on his way.

A tactic pioneered by al-Qaeda but almost unheard of in Afghanistan until 2005, suicide bombing is becoming more popular with insurgents trying to meet the greatly intensified NATO campaign with their own surge of violence.

In one recent case a 12-year-old boy in Barmal district in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan, killed four civilians and wounded many more when he detonated a vest full of explosives in a bazaar.

”They are relying more and more on children,” said Nader Nadery, from the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission, who thought the Taliban were struggling to recruit enough adults. ”When somebody runs out of one tool they go to use the second one.”

Noor Mohammad, who was interviewed at a children’s prison in Kabul on Tuesday, is awaiting trial after surrendering to the Americans rather than going through with the attack.

He says he was left by his Taliban handlers to walk the last few kilometres to the base in Andar district two weeks ago. Instead he sat down and thought about his predicament. ”It is a sin to kill yourself and to kill others,” he decided. ”So I took off the vest and threw it away.”

Surrendering proved tricky as the guards he had been supposed to kill were slow to raise the alert and he was questioned only after sleeping outside the camp for a night.

He later led the Americans to the village where the Taliban members lived, identifying a house where the Americans recovered weapons and explosives. Two Taliban from the village were also killed during a shootout after he identified them, the boy said. He knows he will never be able to go back home and will probably never see his family again.

Not all bombers are coerced. Some are tricked, like a group of four children who were recently arrested after travelling alone across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, said his agency’s informants had raised the alarm the four were on their way. The boys had confessed during questioning, saying they believed only American soldiers would die and they would escape unscathed.

Suicide bombing has also developed a sinister glamour among the youth of Pakistan’s tribal areas. A video in which children enact a suicide bombing circulated widely in February, sparking public alarm at how jihad appears to have reached the playground.

It also seems to have reached the Kabul juvenile detention centre. ”When I told my cellmates I refused to do a suicide attack, none of them could understand why I didn’t do it,” Noor Mohammad said.