The windows are wide open and birds are singing in the trees outside. The Kabul traffic hums in the distance. Abit (21) and not looking a year more in his jaunty cap and black shalwar kameez, is sitting in the headquarters of the National Security Directorate, the Afghan intelligence service, and talking about how he became a suicide bomber.
”So I drove the truck towards the base,” he says. ”I was not thinking of anything. I just kept saying ‘allahu akbar, allahu akbar’ [God is great, God is great].”
He is not from these parts, Abit says, and that is part of the reason he is talking. The Afghan government is keen to underline the role that they say Pakistan — or at least some Pakistanis — play in the violence in Afghanistan. Foreign journalists who struggle through the bureaucracy and can pull a few strings can get interviews with detainees, in the company of their jailers. The conditions are not ideal but the stories of young men like Abit are revealing nonetheless, not least for the number of common elements they share with other accounts from suicide bombers interviewed elsewhere. Abit comes from Bahwalpur, in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab. He is not, therefore, Afghan nor even from the Pashtun tribes that straddle the Afghan-Pakistani frontier like the majority of average Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
For decades, Bahawalpur has been a hotbed of hardline Sunni Muslim radicalism though Abit says the madrassa he attended as a boy merely taught him basic literacy skills and a little Qur’anic knowledge. As only a minority of Pakistani madrassas directly preach violence, this is possible. Instead of the classic figure of the extremist mullah, it was a friend who was Abit’s first link with militancy. This route into violence — in the first instance through friends or family — is now seen by most international security services as the most widespread in Europe and south-west Asia.
Rewards of martyrdom
Abit says that he was working in a bakery when a friend called Abdul Ghaffour suggested that he join him on a trip to Waziristan. The 21-year-old, whose father works in the Gulf, insists that it was for ”tourism”, though this seems unlikely. Pakistan’s new TV channels and local papers mean that the war being fought against the militants in Pakistan’s anarchic western ”tribal agencies” is known even to semi-illiterate bakers in Bahawalpur.
The ”tour” took the pair directly to a compound near the town of Wana run by local Taliban. Abdul Ghaffour swiftly disappeared, leaving Abit with a dozen or so local men and a few other recruits. Their days were spent reading the Qur’an, receiving specifically targeted religious instruction and viewing militant jihadi propaganda videos. ”We watched films of bombardments and fighting in Iraq. They told me the whole infidel world was coming to Afghanistan to invade and repress Muslims and that it was the duty of all Muslims to resist. They told me about the rewards of martyrdom,” Abit said. The narrative is largely universal — as is the isolation of recruits. Scared by tales of what might happen to him as a ”Punjabi” if he went wandering in the local bazaar, he stayed within the compound’s confines.
Abit said the process was ”gradual” — again typical — but after several months he was prepared to ”sacrifice himself for Islam”. With an Afghan Taliban commander he travelled to Ghazni, a city an hour’s drive south of Kabul, crossing the porous frontier in a car without trouble. But after months of further indoctrination and looking for a target, he was suddenly returned to his starting point, again crossing the frontier without difficulty. A day later, the local Pakistani Taliban commander who ran the Wana compound told him that everything was ready. The target — a US base on the frontier — had been selected.
”They told me there were just Americans there,” Abit said. ”They told me not to think about what would happen to my body because Allah ensures martyrs suffer no pain. They told me to remember that a martyr takes his relatives with him to paradise and that was as important for me as the infidels committing violence and tyranny.”
Abit said he was driven to within a kilometre or so of the base where a truck stuffed with explosives was waiting with a detonator button wired to the dashboard. ”I got in and set off. I felt nothing. But the first soldiers I saw were not American but Afghan. And I could see no Americans. And they told me to stop the truck and I got down and I gave myself up. Now I am very sorry and I am glad that no one was harmed.”
Abit’s story is typical both of those told by other candidates for suicide bombers elsewhere and of those told by other detainees in Afghanistan. It also matches the picture revealed by a recent study by the UN in Afghanistan which said that 80% of suicide bombers in Afghanistan came from the Pakistani tribal agencies.
Suicide bombing is a new phenomenon in the country. Two such attacks were reported in 2003; three in 2004, 123 in 2006 and 160 attackers who killed or injured more than 1 700 people last year. So far 2008 looks as if it will break that record again.
The tactic remains deeply controversial, even among Taliban commanders — largely because of the profoundly negative reaction of the local population.
That the training and recruitment networks are based in Pakistan, where there are vast reserves of young men like Abit remain, seems logical. Decades of exposure to radical world views and conflict, continuing poverty, rapid social and cultural change that has broken down previous value systems and degraded the authority of traditional tribal or religious leaders all contribute to the ease with which volunteers are found. The tribal zones of Pakistan also offer a crucial safe haven — or relatively safe haven compared to Afghanistan and its 73 000 western troops — for militants. And of course there are question marks over the exact relationship between Pakistani intelligence services and various Taliban factions — though little hard evidence has ever surfaced.
A second interview with a would-be suicide bomber in Kabul — that of a destitute, illiterate and clearly mentally unstable shepherd captured near the eastern town of Khost with a suicide bomb strapped to his body — showed how recruiters for extremist networks often target the most marginal elements in society and particularly those who have slipped out of traditional social networks of support and authority.
Abit is likely to have been beaten by Afghan interrogators in prison. He will have undoubtedly edited his story, minimising his own responsibility and maximising his current repentance. But his account is largely credible. He will by now have been transferred to the newly refurbished Pul-e-Sharqi jail and he is unlikely to be freed soon. It is likely that many more like him will join him there in the coming years. – guardian.co.uk