From Asian News International, with thanks to Nicolei, who points out that this practice resembles the seizure from their Christian homes, forced conversion to Islam, and military training of the janissaries of the illustrious Ottoman Empire.
Pakistan’s military has said that foreign militants are kidnapping children and training them as “future terrorists” in the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan.
Khalid is also one of the several such teenagers who have been receiving jihadi training from the militants. So indoctrinated have these children become with the aspect of jihad, that without even understanding the implications a religious intolerant group like the Taliban will have on society, they are vociferously espousing jihad and the establishment of a puritan Islamic government based on Sharia in Afghanistan.
“I want Islam, the government of Taliban. The entire world understands that the Taliban is a true Islamic government. I know that Osama bin Laden is a good man,” Khalid was quoted as saying. Even military officials acknowledge that the children though seem innocent to the eye are in fact the terrorist of the future generations.
“First of all, you will probably be perturbed by the thought that children who are not even capable of wiping their noses, so how can they be terrorists? They are the future terrorists. They are terrorists of the future,” Lt General Safdar Hussain, the military chief of Pakistan NWFP was quoted as saying by a foreign news agency.