The mission was as simple as touching two wires together; the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the infidels — but he would go straight to heaven. Umarradicalised and rigged with his explosive payload, the boy, who was 14, was driven to his target in Punjab after being plucked from the streets of Miranshah in North Waziristan. Taliban said the people who pray to the dead at shrines are even bigger infidels and he believed them. Umar was to blow himself up in public; he never went through with his mission. Umar confesses that he was manipulated by TTP recruiter Qari Zafar. He was told Pakistan had become a Western country; there was no Islam here and whoever went to kill them would go to heaven. Umar’s story is not unusual. In the past year, insurgents have used a wave of child suicide bombers, some as young as 10, on the ruthless assumption that small boys can pass through checkpoints and security cordons more easily than men.
“But at the time I detonated myself, thoughts of my family were not in my mind, I was only thinking about what the Taliban had taught me.” He wanted to be a fedayee (martyr0, to blow himself up and kill as many people as possible. The bomb was already strapped to his body. But on the way to the attack, mission failed in panic. “It wasn’t easy. I was heading in the direction. It was a momentary stumble. Yes, I faltered when the decisive moment came, I got panicked and failed”.
Why did he decide to commit suicide? He says “No, that’s not it. That’s not right. I didn’t go to commit suicide. I went to die a martyr’s death. I wanted to get the reward. I spent four months in the mosque. I learned there how important it was to be fedayee. It is the loftiest objective. It seemed very important to me religiously. It was like the biggest and most holy thing I could do. And then Qari Zafar told me to think of all the rewards I would receive in Paradise.”
Amputated left arm from the elbow, strapped right arm and most of the anterior abdomen in bandages, lying in intensive care surgical ward under custody he barely revealed his emotions and expressed neither sorrow nor remorse initially. He was expressionless and spoke in a cold, monotonous tone as if he were reciting slogans. The gut feeling of the others in the room was that Umar was not truthful, especially when he said that he would not be interested in attempting another bombing. However after talking through he seemed much more sincere and insightful. It was reasonable to believe him. It seemed now as if he understood the craziness that he was sucked into. Because now it was evident to him that he wants life and not death.
It is hard to ignore that the environmental factor is the key in such cases and not the socio-economic situation. Whether they are working or unemployed, or suffering the years of oppression and built-up frustration or whether they are educated or not, these recruiting parameters have weight even if it is marginal. Above all, it has to do with the person’s character and how susceptible he is to pressure and persuasion. There is an entire system with its sights set on this satanic aim. It operates entirely in order to produce human bombs. As soon as they identified him as suitable, they trapped him like a fish in a net. These suicide bombers are not created out of nowhere. They are not born like that. The TTP, the Punjabi Taliban and IS find them. It is the most cynical and cruel exploitation of human lives, of young people’s lives especially. The weak, like Umar and hundreds ofothers are caught.It shows the evil of the psychopathic culture of death concocted in the name of religion that the Taliban are prescribing to young mindsets, and provides a clear understanding of what risk we are up against.
Certainly, there is misery. Certainly, there is frustration. Certainly, they are religiously naïve and get easily manipulated. But then, at the moment of crisis, someone from one of these death organisations comes and seduces them. Out of inertia, Umar kept going further and further with it until the zero hours arrived. That is when the environment operates and exploits fragile personalities and gets them swept up in a current.
Once they are on this satanic conveyor belt, they don’t have a moment to think about the price they are going to pay. In most cases, it is a lost cause by this point. Before they manage to think about for whom and what they are dying, they are already dead along with all their innocent victims.
But, unfortunately, while the military is carrying out these necessary actions, the operations themselves become a hothouse that produces more and more suicide bombers. The military actions kindle the frustration, hatred and despair, and are the incubator for the terror to come. The religious and political environment immediately exploits this effect and dispatches the new suicide bombers, and the pattern is repeated.
The development of an effective counter-terrorism policy necessarily begins with a compelling and coherent account of what causes terrorism to exist. An accurate understanding of the factors that give rise to terrorism is essential to developing a holistic policy response in which measures are aimed not just at responding to terrorist attacks with police investigations and military actions but also at preventing terrorist attacks from taking place in the first place.
The aim is to develop models that could explain the process by which ordinary people became willing to carry out acts of mass violence, even against their fellow citizens. The notion of radicalisation notes that political, economic, social and psychological forces underpin terrorism and political violence. Most analysts of radicalisation start from the assumption that some extremist versions of Islam usually defined as Salafism are capable of capturing the minds of Muslims and turning them into terrorists.
The challenge is then to understand the process by which extremist religious ideology takes hold among young Muslim minds. These radicalisation models were then drawn on by policymakers, intelligence analysts and law enforcement officers in crafting strategies to prevent future attacks and it is important that Nation Action Plan and the Terrorism Research Centers focus on investigating and researching indigenous terrorism issues through multi-disciplinary collaboration amongst a group of international expertsin Pakistan urgently.
Resources available to counter-terrorism should enable spaces for wide-ranging discussions of religious ideology, identity, particularly among young people who feel excluded from mainstream education. Those spaces should not be undercut by the fear that expressions of radical views will attract the attention of intelligence agencies and police counter-terrorism units.
The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at [email protected]