Karzai Pardons Teen Trained as Bomber

A fourteen-year-old boy, Rafiqullah, said men at a Pakistani madrassa (religious school) showed him and two of his classmates videos of suicide attackers and taught them to drive a car and motorcycles.

Then they gave Rafiqullah his mission: kill an Afghan governor.

Rafiqullah said he walked eight hours from Pakistan to the Afghan city of Khost, where a militant named Abdul Aziz tried to pump up his courage. Aziz provided him with an explosives-laden vest whereupon the teenager confessed his fears.

When he said he was afraid to carry out the suicide attack, Abdul Aziz pointed a gun at him and told him that he would be killed if he did not carry out the attack.

President Hamid Karzai declared Rafiqullah an innocent pawn manipulated by terrorist militants and on Sunday freed the teen, who appears to be at least the third child co-opted by Taliban fighters to carry out attacks since April.

Karzai said, "Today we are faced with a fearful and terrifying truth, and that truth is the sending of a Muslim child to carry out a suicide attack."

Last month, a 6-year-old boy in Ghazni province said the Taliban forced him to put on a suicide vest and walk up to American soldiers, a potential attack was foiled when the boy asked Afghan soldiers for help.

In a gory Taliban video that surfaced in April militants are shown instructing a boy of about 12 as he beheaded an alleged traitor with a knife.

Rafiqullah said at least two other teenage boys his age had been indoctrinated to carry out suicide attacks at his madrassa.

The United Nations considers the use of such young combatants as constituting a war crime.


Soap Box Ravings says while the United Nations says using children as soldiers is a war crime, they do nothing about it in the many countries, particularly in Africa where it occurs often. I would also like to point out that this teen was sent to kill another Muslim, because that Muslim was not a Taliban believer.

Soap Box Ravings also wonders if the United Nations has an official position on cutting another humans head off with a knife to make a propaganda video.