Captured as 8-year old Spozhmay

Captured as 8-year old Spozhmay attemted to detonate a suicide vest out a police station in Helmand, Afghanistan

     At the beginning of this year I heard about the story of this little girl named Spozhmay, just 8 year old. She has been detained of wearing a suicide vest but was stopped by Afghan police while she was on the way to carry out a deadly attack on a border police station in southern Helmand province. The girl is reported to be the sister of a prominent Taliban commander.

     

The girl said to be in shock and confusion, and said in a statement that her brother, a local Taliban commander had sent her on the mission. One of the afghan soldiers has spotted her wearing a suicide jacket, but was arrested before she could carry out the attack as she struggled to operate the detonator. This has saved many peoples life including her´s. Today she has been transfered to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. Her brother will propably be out and watching after her, to renew another attack.

     In 2011 an eight- year old girl died after she was tricked into carrying a concealed bomb, close to a police vehicle, where it was remotely detonated. In july last year it emergerged that Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan are bribing starving children as young as 6-8 years old to plant deadly roadside booby traps, be decoys in ambushes and even act as suicide bombers. Despite the islamic fundamentalists, claiming of not using children in their ranks, extremists have been very actively recruiting orphaned and homeless young boys, train them to suing guns, improvising explosive devices (IED) and suicide vests. In return they offering them sweets and chocolote and sometimes som coins.

     An afghan boy of the age 8 was promised a handful of coins by Taliban gighters to convert him to their cause. The boy had been tending his father’s flock of sheep when coalition forces bombed his village. ”The Taliban were hiding in our house when a helicopter came and bombed us,” my father was hit in his head and heart while he was torn apart and my mother was hit and died het old, and now I have none. He was in the aftermath of the raid kidnapped by Taliban leaders, taken to a nearby village and shown how to use guns and make IED:s. They became to be his new family, they plied him with food and sweets and initally he was delighted when they said they were brig him an extra special gift – a suicide vest packed with bullets and grenades.

     Another story is about a five year old boy, who was trained to fire guns by extremists in Afghanistan. Het old that ”They made me try it on. The grenades went all around my body and then they offered me the coins (50 Afghanis)”. They told me the nto blow myself up at a checkpoint. They told me that I will go to heaven, to a better world with angels. He finally woke up and escaped, walked 9 miles to turn himself in at a police station, now at the age of 10 he lives in an orphanage in Lashkar Gah, but other children are less fortunate. Today they are 224 children in prison only in Helmand and Ghazni, arrested for planning or carrying out attacks.