What value would you place on a child’s head? If you’re a parent — or at least human — your answer is that a child is priceless, that no amount of money can be substituted for his life.
That’s if you’re human. If you’re the Taliban, the answer to that question is “about a buck.” The Daily Mail reports:
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan are bribing starving children as young as eight years old to plant deadly roadside booby traps, be decoys in ambushes and even act as suicide bombers.
Despite the Islamic fundamentalists’ claim they have no children in their ranks, extremists have been actively recruiting orphaned and homeless young boys and training them to use guns, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide vests.
In return, they ply the desperate youngsters with sweets and chocolate….
One Afghan orphan named Neaz told Britain’s Channel 4 that at age 8 he was promised a handful of coins by Taliban fighters trying to enlist him to their cause. The offer came after his village was destroyed and his parents killed. Taliban leaders took him to a nearby town and showed him how to use guns and make IEDs.
They plied Neaz, now 15 with sweets to gain his trust and cooperation. Then they brought him an “extra-special gift” — a suicide vest packed with bullets and grenades. He told reporters:
They made me try it on. The grenades went all around my body and then they offered me the coins [50 Afghanis – about 91 cents]. They told me to blow myself up at a checkpoint. I asked what I’d do with the money if I had to blow myself up. But they kept encouraging me, telling me that if I did it I would go to heaven.
