Note that the appeal is, once again, theological — the very element that the State Department and DHS have now determined to ignore. “The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber,” by Kim Sengupta in the Independent, June 10 (thanks to all who sent this in):
The surroundings were grim and forbidding, a notorious jail run by Afghanistan’s feared security service for those taken prisoner in the bloody war with the Taliban.
Among the inmates: Shakirullah Yasin Ali; a small, frail boy, just 14 years old, arrested as he prepared to carry out a suicide bombing against British and American targets. “If I had succeeded, I would be dead now, I realise that,” he said in a soft, nervous voice.
“But those who were instructing me said that if I believed in serving God it was my duty to fight against the foreigners. They said God would protect me when the time came.”
It was a suicide bomber like Shakirullah who, on Sunday, claimed the lives of three more British soldiers in Helmand, bringing the total number of UK fatalities in Afghanistan to 100.
[…]
“All I know is what the mullahs told me and kept telling me, that the British and the Americans were against God,” he said with his head bowed down, his hands twisting a handkerchief….