Taliban recruits teenage suicide bombers for revenge attacks

Video films made by the Taliban in Pakistan's troubled Swat valley show teenage boys being groomed as suicide bombers for revenge attacks against local security forces.

By Nick Meo in Peshawar


After the army began an operation to clear Taliban from the valley in May, fighters went from house to house demanding a boy or young man from each family, with recruits encouraged to volunteer for martyrdom missions.

Last week 24 people died and more than 300 were wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a secret police headquarters in Lahore, and six policemen were killed when an attacker detonated explosives at a checkpoint in Peshawar.

Taliban spokesmen said the attacks inside Pakistan's main cities were revenge for the army's assault.

Propaganda films obtained by The Sunday Telegraph in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, show boys of 14 or 15 recording farewell messages before climbing into vehicles filled with explosives.

Suicide bombings were extremely rare in Pakistan but have increased dramatically since the Taliban took control of Swat in the aftermath of a bungled government crackdown on extremists launched in 2007.

One film which Pakistanis have been watching with horrified fascination shows a boy of about 15, named in the video as Arshad Ali from Swat, who attacked a polling station after the Taliban banned voting last year.

Sitting with an AK-47 cradled in his lap and fiddling with prayer beads, he stares into the camera. Speaking calmly, he said that the people of Swat were living in evil times and that sacrifice was called for.

"Some hypocrites say that we are doing this for money - or because of brainwashing - but we are told by Allah to target these pagans," he said, in a reference to government claims that the families of suicide bombers were paid after the attacks.

He said: "I invite my fellows to sacrifice themselves".

His final message was for his father, who he urged to stop working in a bank which paid interest, a practice which extremists consider to be usury and unIslamic.

The film then switched to the scene of devastation after the attack, with demolished buildings and piles of rubble-strewn with corpses. The two-minute clip has become the latest hit in a craze for jihadi videos that has swept Pakistan's north-west. DVDs and CDs are openly sold in bazaars, replacing Bollywood films which the extremists have banned.

Films are also swapped between mobile phones or on social networking sites.

Many of them feature the last messages of young suicide bombers, and footage shot of their attacks from a distance – with the cameraman heard chanting "Allah Akbar" (God is great) after each explosion.

The films also show gruesome "trials" and beheadings of alleged spies and captured policemen, whippings of criminals, the aftermath of attacks by guerrillas, and scenes of young jihadis preparing for holy war in training camps.

Another boy, who looks even younger than Arshad Ali, tells the camera: "If I die, do not cry for me. I will be in Heaven waiting for you."

Soon afterwards he killed himself in an attack in which dozens of security personnel died or were wounded.

Sermons from firebrand leaders, jihadi songs about revenge, or chanting of Koranic verses are played as a soundtrack over the footage.

In one sermon, Maulana Fazlulla, one of the movement's leaders in Swat, who is also known as Maulana Radio from his liking for broadcasting, said that the Taliban has set up their own media wing because Pakistani journalists were biased against them.

Maulana Fazlulla is believed to be the commander chiefly responsible for the Taliban's strategy of using young suicide bombers. Last year he told Pakistani journalists: "I am so proud that our boys use their flesh and bones as a weapon for Islam".

On one of the videos he is heard to say: "A lot of people have given us everything for jihad, their homes, their money, their children too."

Another video showed Pakistani planes bombing villages. Such bombardments have killed large numbers of civilians. As the pictures of burned victims and charred villages are played, the maulana says: "To revenge our children we will send out regiments of suicide bombers."

The suicide attacks, which seem to be modelled on al-Qaeda's tactics in Iraq, have spread fear through the ranks of the military and silenced many of the tribal leaders who oppose the Taliban.

"They have ruined our Pushtun culture," one Peshawar businessman said. "They attack mosques at prayer times, murder elders, and recruit boys to kill themselves. All of this is forbidden in Islam."

The man did not want to give his name for fear of falling victim to the Taliban's assassination campaign.

"Not even in the bloodiest battles in the past have we seen this. It is the Arab al-Qaeda way of jihad. It is poisoning our lands."

One of the few leaders from Swat who is prepared to speak out against the Taliban is Riaz Khan, a political worker for the PML-N opposition party who described how the Taliban had taken over the valley. "The Taliban says to people, if you want to live here you will have to support us with money or give us one person from your family.

"They brainwash boys in madrassas. They prepare them mentally for suicide bombing. There has never been anything like this in Swat before – before this the people of Swat were religious but peaceful."

The British government is so worried about the spread of radicalisation among young people in NWFP that in April it announced the quadrupling of spending on development in Pakistan to more than £600 million over four years

The government has been so concerned about propaganda videos that Pakistani television stations have been forbidden from showing them.

But they can also backfire on the groups who make them. When ordinary Pakistanis watched the films that they can buy in bazaars, they see what life under Taliban rule is like.

"I always had a soft corner of my heart for the Taliban because I thought that they were good Muslims and they were fighting against government injustice," said Mohammed Khan, a shopkeeper who lives in Islamabad.

"But when I saw men being slaughtered like beasts in executions, and boys going to kill themselves, I was shocked."

There have been growing signs in the past week of a new bitterness in the battle between the Taliban and the Pakistan government. The price on the head of Maulana Fazlulla was increased to 50 million rupees (£372,000) alive or dead, ten times the original bounty that was offered for him. In return, the Taliban have threatened new revenge attacks.

A telephone intercept of Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman in Swat, was released in which he urged attacks on the families of soldiers. "Strikes should be carried out on their homes so their kids get killed and then they'll realise," he was quoted as saying.

The army appears to have been successful in driving Taliban back in large areas, and it claimed yesterday that it had regained control of Mingora, the capital of Swat. However, the battles have resulted in an exodus of 2.4 million refugees. In turn this has created a new security problem - hundreds of terrorists are feared to be hiding among those who have fled.

Police have so far arrested more than 30 suspected Taliban in refugee camps, but there was concern that many more may have used the chaos to slip into Pakistan's cities. Fears of suicide bombers striking crowds are running so high in Peshawar that gatherings of more than 10 people have been banned.

See the Taliban's film of Arshad Ali on Telegraph TV

(Courtesy Daily Times, Telegraph)