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| Afghanistan |
| Portrait of a suicide bomber |
| 2008-09-11 |
| 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. |
| Posted by:Fred |