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ISLAMABAD — Terrorists are buying children and turning them into suicide bombers to carry out deadly attacks across the country, Interior Minister Rehman Malik asserted on June 15. A suicide bomber’s parents are paid between US$6,000 and $30,000.
Suicide bombings have become frequent in Pakistan in the past year in high-profile attacks on hotels, government, police and military installations. According to a report by the Pakistan Institute of Policy Studies, at least 5,000 child suicide bombers between the ages of 10 and 17, with some as young as seven-years-old, have been trained as suicide bombers for Taliban attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, and more are waiting to strike at the orders of their masters.
According to Pakistan Intelligence sources, hundreds of children are undergoing brainwashing at several “suicide nurseries” run by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTPP) Chief Baitullah Mehsud in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In January 2008, the military discovered a suicide nursery in the Spinkai area of South Waziristan.
After training, most child suicide bombers are sent to Afghanistan to target NATO troops and Afghan security forces, but some are deployed for strikes inside Pakistan. On April 6, a child suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shia mosque in the Chakwal district, killing 26 and injuring more than fifty. During the Bhutto case investigations, authorities detained Aitzaz Shah, 15, in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). He told investigators that he was deployed as the “back-up bomber” for Bhutto’s assassination by Mehsud’s men.
“Pakistan suffered the sharpest rise in suicide attacks, from just over 3 percent between mid-2006 to mid-2007 to almost 13 percent between July 2007 and June 2008”, said Assaf Moghadan from the Combating Terrorism Centre, an independent research institute at the West Point military academy in the U.S.
The Pakistani government on June 28 offered a reward of $600,000 for information leading to the capture of Mehsud, dead or alive. Two national Urdu-language newspapers and local papers in the north-west city of Peshawar also carried adverts about rewards for the capture of 10 of Baitullah’s senior Taliban commanders.