Children used as cannon fodder-- and lied to -- to advance the cause of Islam. Where is the outrage? The Afghan government is trying to call attention to these cases to erode support for the Taliban, but there doesn't seem to be much of a response on either side of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Afghan intelligence: Taliban using child bombers," by Rahim Faiez for the Associated Press, May 15 (thanks to JCB):
KABUL, Afghanistan – The orders from their religious teacher were clear: Go to Afghanistan, strap on a suicide vest and kill foreign forces.
With that, 9-year-old Ghulam Farooq left his home in Pakistan with three other would-be boy bombers and headed into eastern Afghanistan.
They were told there would be two members of the Taliban waiting for them at the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province. Instead, members of the Afghan intelligence service who had been tipped to the boys' plans arrested them at the border.
"Our mullah told us that when we carried out our suicide attacks, all the people around us would die, but we would stay alive," Farooq said Saturday, sitting inside a juvenile detention facility in the Afghan capital.
He was one of five alleged suicide bombers — all boys in adolescence or even younger — whom the Afghan intelligence service paraded before reporters, photographers and cameramen at a news conference on May 7 in an effort to turn public opinion against the Taliban.
Farooq and the other boys are being held at a detention facility that resembles a vocational training center. There are no armed guards, and the facility has classrooms and playgrounds. During a visit to the center, Farooq was smiling and said he was going to school and that he and the other boys were being given the opportunity to learn carpet weaving, carpentry and other handicrafts. The facility has dozens of boys, most detained in criminal cases.
Afghan intelligence officials say the Taliban turns to young boys because they are easier to recruit than adults and tend to believe what recruiters tell them.
"The Taliban are recruiting children in their ranks and using them to carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan," Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, told reporters. "These innocent children have been cheated and sent to Afghanistan."
The Taliban denies the accusation. In a statement issued a week ago, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgency's code of conduct prohibits young people from staying in military centers with fighters. Instead, he alleged that the youths were working for the Afghan police and public and private security companies.
"These children have joined the ranks of the enemy on the enemy's luring, taking advantage of their ignorance and lack of knowledge," he said.
In fact, the use of children to conduct suicide bombings is not a new tactic in the nearly decade-long war, Afghan officials say.
Confirmed cases are rare, and it's difficult to identify the bodies of bombers who blow themselves up. But Mashal said there had been a recent increase in the use of children.
In the past two months, he said, child suicide bombers executed two deadly attacks. The arrest of Farooq and three other boys allegedly heading toward suicide attacks came earlier this month, and Mashal said authorities are holding a fifth child who was about to carry out a bombing but then decided against it.
Farooq, clad in a dark green Afghan-style shirt, said he was persuaded to become a suicide bomber by a mullah in a mosque near Peshawar, Pakistan. His story could not be independently verified.
"He told us that there are infidels in Kabul and we must carry out suicide attacks against them," the boy said. "We were taught how to use a suicide vest in the Spin Mosque in Kher Abad near Peshawar where we live."
"I want to go home," he added. "I miss my family."
Ten-year-old Fazel Rahman, another member of the foursome, corroborated the story at the news conference, even using similar phrasing to Farooq's.
"The mullah in the mosque told us that the infidels were in Kabul and everyone should go for jihad" and that the bombers themselves would survive, Rahman said....
"Farooq and the other boys are being held at a detention facility that resembles a vocational training center. There are no armed guards, and the facility has classrooms and playgrounds. During a visit to the center, Farooq was smiling and said he was going to school and that he and the other boys were being given the opportunity to learn carpet weaving, carpentry and other handicrafts. The facility has dozens of boys, most detained in criminal cases."
What a great idea! Note the enthusiasm of the boys; in detention, but given the chance to escape the harsh world of talibanesque jihadism into productivity and normalcy, despite missing their families.
Did the Mullahs tell those young boys about the 72 virgins. too.
[i] Note the enthusiasm of the boys; in detention, but given the chance to escape the harsh world of talibanesque jihadism into productivity and normalcy [/i]
What is 'talibanesque jihadism'? As long as it is considered OK for the kids to remain members of a psychopathic cult, all other efforts are pointless.
what a tragedy
Think of it, a mullah-imam and the only Real God, knows what else forms of hell, coming to a neighborhood musja/mosk (Intentional mispelling, BTW) near you, real soon, if not already.
Yeah, they'll show the children truth of hatred, rage, beatings, abuse, brutality, slavery, beastiality, unending need and desire for sex by force, irresponsibility, etc. and lies about living after the suicide bomb, too, etc.
What we really, actually, need to come to the hoods is sesame street, Mr. Rogers, and other type of how to behave without suicide bombs and all other death to your infidel neighbor. What we need is 0 believers in the practice of satan's cult, and 100% teaching of good and non-violent behavior, of doing positive useful work, going for rewards of one's own non-violent behavior, called work. Not the total devious teachings of subversion by islam.
What we need is for the general public to wake up in America, and get the Rabbis and Preachers to wake up "en mass" and start giving no quarter to evil anymore, in any way, and to start encouraging converting islamics and educating them to the civilized way to live, or get out back to the damn desert, and blow up scorpions instead!
Yeah, I know, I dream!
""I want to go home," he added. "I miss my family.""
Just wait until he finds out his family doesn't want him because they will not receive a Taliban support check as he did not die nor kill anyone....
Exactly.
If there are any Muslim trolls, or leftist Obama-types reading this - TAKE HEED!
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This article sickens me:
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"During a visit to the center, Farooq was smiling and said he was going to school and that he and the other boys were being given the opportunity to learn carpet weaving, carpentry and other handicrafts."
_________________________
Karma, or Jesus, or whatever, (the rigidity, but logical soundness of Atheism, as well) will, eventually, pay these nefarious types their due worth:
________
"Our mullah told us that when we carried out our suicide attacks, all the people around us would die, but we would stay alive,"
This is the age-old scam artist, snake - oil salesman pitch for everlasting life. It's hackneyed. It's 5000 years old.
Oldest in the book.
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These children must be pitied. They must be snatched from the hellhole in which they attempt to live as decent human beings. They must be allowed the chance to succeed outside the bounds of the Sharia.
Their plight is the plight of our own children, like it or not. No matter how one analyzes it, how can a man, such as myself, possibly justify the care of my own, two children, without "leaning" toward the care of those of which we speak?
What a heavy load we bear, No, Madame?
KABUL, Afghanistan – The orders from their religious teacher were clear: Go to Afghanistan, strap on a suicide vest and kill foreign forces.
With that, 9-year-old Ghulam Farooq left his home in Pakistan with three other would-be boy bombers and headed into eastern Afghanistan.
.......................
My first reaction—and, I'm sure, the reaction of many others reading this—was horror that these Jihadists would do this to *a 9-year-old child*.
But Muslims are perfectly fine with raping girls this young, and doing so on Islamic grounds, so it should probably shock less than it does.
More:
"Our mullah told us that when we carried out our suicide attacks, all the people around us would die, but we would stay alive," Farooq said Saturday, sitting inside a juvenile detention facility in the Afghan capital...
"He told us that there are infidels in Kabul and we must carry out suicide attacks against them," the boy said. "We were taught how to use a suicide vest in the Spin Mosque in Kher Abad near Peshawar where we live."
.......................
The main shock is that this vicious "cleric" lied to a little boy about his being spared.
Another matter, though, is this: where did this little boy get the idea that murdering Infidels-and murdering them by stealth—is an acceptable, even praiseworthy thing? Likely these boys have been exposed to this vicious ideology since infancy, and sucked it with their mothers' milk.
*That* is why they were so easy to recruit.
More:
He was one of five alleged suicide bombers — all boys in adolescence or even younger — whom the Afghan intelligence service paraded before reporters, photographers and cameramen at a news conference on May 7 in an effort to turn public opinion against the Taliban.
.......................
Good luck with that. Many Muslims seem all too sanguine about Jihadists murdering other Muslims. Some few may be discomfited at the thought of using Muslim children, but will *any* of them give a thought for their Infidel—or "hypocrite" or "apostate"—would-be victims?
More:
"These innocent children have been cheated and sent to Afghanistan."
The Taliban denies the accusation. In a statement issued a week ago, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgency's code of conduct prohibits young people from staying in military centers with fighters. Instead, he alleged that the youths were working for the Afghan police and public and private security companies.
"These children have joined the ranks of the enemy on the enemy's luring, taking advantage of their ignorance and lack of knowledge," he said.
.......................
Projection. Jihadists have trouble opening their mouths without lying.
More:
In fact, the use of children to conduct suicide bombings is not a new tactic in the nearly decade-long war, Afghan officials say.
Confirmed cases are rare, and it's difficult to identify the bodies of bombers who blow themselves up. But Mashal said there had been a recent increase in the use of children.
.......................
Using children, baby's formula, women's clothing, the mentally disabled—really, there is *nothing* Jihadists will not stoop to.
How can anyone look at this and fail to see the naked face of evil?
As the Chinese would say, Nage Manla gai si! (that Mullah ought to die!). While we're at it, the death by a thousand cuts, without the traditional initial stab to the heart, would be too humane for such a one.
We have seen children recruited for suicide missions everywhere where there is a jihad or intifada. For such reasons alone, I believe that it was worth it to see Sadam Hussein (who paid $25,000 to the families of such dupes) hang with his eyes and tongue popping out. it's just too bad that the parents who encouraged their children in such things weren't taken out and hanged, too.
Kepha wrote:
it's just too bad that the parents who encouraged their children in such things weren't taken out and hanged, too.
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Notice there is *no* mention of the children's families in the above article.
What did they know? Were the children essentially kidnapped by the Taliban? Did they run away to join them? Were the families threatened, or did they knowingly urge their own little ones to become "Shaheeds"?
Hat off comment, Gravenimage! And others, like deebartok, too.
Some people, including, I believe, these boys, are salvageable from the primitive, barbaric sick style of jihadism particular to the taliban.
Gravenimage
you asked about the children's families.
Over at New English Review, they drew attention to a different report about the use of kids as suicide bombers, murder-'martyrs', as published in 'The Telegraph' in the UK.
Here's the Tele. link -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8515012/Taliban-recruiting-nine-year-old-suicide-bombers.html
And here's the relevant passage -
"More than 25 failed suicide bombers aged under 18 are currently in Afghan juvenile custody, the spokesman said.
"The boys had been given amulets containing verses from the Koran which they were told would protect them from the explosion.
"On their return, they would be hailed as heroes
**and their parents would be guaranteed entry into heaven** (my emphasis - dda)".
END QUOTE.
As you and I know - and I remember a memorable posting by Raymond Ibrahim on Muslim beliefs about 'the torments of the grave' - Muslims have no real hope of 'paradise' unless they die as a shaheed; but there seems to be a belief that a shaheed can bring others in on his ticket, so to speak.
"My first reaction—and, I'm sure, the reaction of many others reading this—was horror that these Jihadists would do this to *a 9-year-old child*."
I suppose it is related to the attitude to women. If women can be used as breeding machines and disposed of so easily, the children are nowhere near as precious as the children of men who only have one wife and are obliged (and, hopefully, willing) to look after her and the children. If the kids die, they can just get more.
I went to an ADL demo in Melbourne yesterday (the first), and once again was confronted with the sight of a Muslim woman in the opposing Leftist group, which was fronted by nasty "anti-racist" (yeah, right...) thugs, angrily defending Islam - angrily, and smugly too - she had swarms of Australian "useful idiots" around her (and more Muslims joined in later, young, fresh girls, so foolish...)
Would that any aid given these undeserving evildoers would be tied to the gifting of their children to non-Muslim couples. Since they've already given them for a few pieces of silver to the madrassas, they won't miss them when they're renamed and sent to non-Muslim families worldwide.
I'll tell you what: The UN can give all the free candy-shaped birthcontrol over in Pakistan and Afghanistan they want, and we'll take any child under five.
Thx, TJ.
Re-reading the article and the rest of the comments this morning has been enlightening.
Still, however, the article is utterly and completely sickening. Those responsible must be held to account, one by one, if necessary.
My heart sinks to new lows...
The Spin Mosque in Kher Abad near Peshawar should be destroyed, by Afghans, and be photographed doing it. Using members of the same sect that mosque claims to represent. It would also be just to execute the mullah in charge as an apostate, a misunderstander of mohammad's teaching.
The Spin Mosque in Kher Abad near Peshawar should be destroyed, by Afghans, and be photographed doing it. Using members of the same sect that mosque claims to represent. It would also be just to execute the mullah in charge as an apostate, a misunderstander of mohammad's teaching.
Don't be silly! At their ages the only use boys have for girls is as targets to throw stuff at. Hmmmm, they MIGHT have been promised SLOW girls in paradise to throw things at.
Don't be silly! At their ages the only use boys have for girls is as targets to throw stuff at. Hmmmm, they MIGHT have been promised SLOW girls in paradise to throw things at.
"I want to go home," he added. "I miss my family."
Is there a more scathing indictment of Islam? I don't think so.
You probably have a point. But I've read of Falastin Arab families that are sooooooo proud of their little shahids and handed out candy when they blew up a few of their Jewish peers while killing themselves. Maybe these poor Pakistani kids were kidnapped or misled into becoming suicide bombers without parental knowledge. If so, the families have my sympathy.
But parents who'd knowingly do such a thing are not fit to live. That's an opinion of mine which I am not changing. The whole thing smacks of the sin for which God ordered Moses and Joshua to cleanse the land, and for which the Israelites themselves were later cocndemned to the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities [yes, I am a Christian fundamentalist].