Posted on 01/02/2010 9:56:20 AM PST by FourPeas
BAJAUR, Pakistan -- After being trained as a suicide bomber by the Taliban and sent on a suicide mission, 14-year-old Usman Ghani is lucky to be alive.
A resident of Khar, in the tribal agency of Bajaur in northwest Pakistan, Ghani was taken by four armed Taliban from his house one morning about a year ago to be trained as a suicide bomber.
Ghani's father, a poor locksmith Lal Zaman, kept quiet, as he had been threatened and accused by the Taliban of selling hashish.
Pakistani security forces launched a huge operation in Bajaur in August 2009 to root out militants led by Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, a local Taliban leader. The operation has reduced the Taliban threat, however there are still kidnappings and thousands of displaced people are unable to return to their homes.
On the day he was kidnapped, Ghani said he was blindfolded and taken to the Banadai area of Mamoond tehsil, where Taliban chief Maulvi Faqir Muhammad has his headquarters
'Be A Bomber, Or Be Slaughtered'
The eldest son of seven children, Ghani said four of his Taliban kidnappers were from his area.
Ghani was then taken to see three bearded men who told him that his father was selling hashish and he had to work for them to avoid punishment for his family.
"Get ready to be a suicide bomber or be slaughtered," the three men told him. You are lucky to be chosen for this sacred mission. This will take you straight to paradise where you will meet beautiful women and streams of honey and milk
"Upon refusal, I was fastened to a post for six days and severely beaten. Finally I agreed to become their recruit because I could not bear further torture," the young boy said.
After his agreement, the militants took him to a room, where he met two other boys, one his age and the other a little older, who were also being groomed as suicide bombers.
The three bearded men visited them the same night and started preaching about the benefits of jihad and suicide attacks. "One of them was Mullah Abdullah, a resident of the Banadai village of Mamoond tehsil and whom I knew," he said.
"'You are lucky to be chosen for this sacred mission. This will take you straight to paradise where you will meet beautiful women and streams of honey and milk,'" Ghani said the men told him. "You’re going to sacrifice your lives in the way of Allah and you will get a place in paradise, but don’t forget us when you get there."
Ghani said that after repeated lectures, and listening to CDs and audio cassettes for a week, one of the men asked him: "Are you ready to be a Fidayee [one who sacrifices his life for God] and I replied in the negative because the lectures had no effects upon me."
When they failed to persuade him, he said they started giving him drugs.
"One of the three men blindfolded me one night and handed me a tablet and directed to swallow it," he said. "I asked what it was, and he said it was good for your health." After taking the pill, Ghani said he began to forget things and could no longer recall his brothers, sister, and parents.
"Everything they told me seemed justified and I got emotional and the whole world changed in just 10 minutes. Then they started telling me that the army and police were the enemies of Islam and we have to safeguard our religion and I started believing in their words," he said.
"I said yes to becoming a suicide bomber and they patted me on the back," Ghani said. He said the practice of administering the pills continued for at least one week "after which they started instructing me on how to reach the target, how to draw the pin, how to walk towards your target, and how to detonate the explosives."
"Whenever I used to ask for prayers and water for ablution, the trainers told me that you don’t need to pray as you have already won a place in paradise because of your sacred mission and I used to believe their words," he recalled.
"They used to tell me not to care much about civilians because those pious among them would go to paradise while the sinners would get their place in hell. You will get the credit for sending the believers to paradise and sinners to hell."
Mosque Plot
After completion of his training, Ghani said he was introduced to the Taliban chief Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, who for two days lectured him about the "great sacrifice" of becoming a suicide bomber and the benefits of life after death.
He was then handed over to Maulvi Omar, a Taliban spokesman who is now in the custody of the security forces. He instructed him to go to the targeted mosque for prayers so that people would not consider him a stranger.
The last thing that Ghani did before going to his target was to fire an AK-47 assault rifle in front of a video camera in the presence of his mentors at an unknown location.
Then he was asked to go to the mosque on a Friday (Ghani can't recall the exact date) and detonate the explosives vest in the second row of the mosque in order to kill a tribal elder.
"To send me on the mission, they brought a suicide vest, but it was a little too big for me. They replaced it with another one that fitted me," he said.
Ghani said it was either luck or the mercy of God that he suddenly recalled his youngest brother as soon as he reached the mosque.
"I looked at copies of the holy Koran and the elderly people and it struck me that they are all Muslims. I returned without carrying out the suicide mission."
Ghani said he was handed over to another commander Jan Wali, alias Sheena, in the area of Sewai after he returned without fulfilling the mission.
He was again, he said, subjected to severe physical punishment, before one day his captors left the door unlocked and he managed to escape and reach his home in Khar.
Shortly afterwards, he was arrested by intelligence officials who believed he had been trained and sent into Khar to be used against a target.
He is presently being kept in custody and undergoing rehabilitation.
But Ghani has always maintained that he had escaped Taliban captivity and that all he wants now is to go to school and become a soldier.
A version of this article was originally published by Pakistan's "The News International On Sunday"
ping for later
We also have liberals in this country who would not recognize a jihadist even if slit their throats.
Sounds just like the health care plan - telling us it’s good for us, but THEY won’t sign on.
gnip...
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