Taliban tried to trick young boy into suicide bomb mission

A STORY of a six-year-old Afghan boy who says he thwarted an effort by Taliban militants to trick him into being a suicide bomber provoked tears and anger at a meeting of tribal leaders.

The account from Juma Gul, a child who collects scrap metal for money, left American soldiers shocked that a youngster could be sent on such a mission.

The Taliban dismissed the story as propaganda, at a time when US and Nato forces are under increasing criticism over civilian casualties, but Afghan tribal elders and US military officers said they believed the story.

Juma said that some time last month Taliban fighters forced him to wear a vest they said would spray out flowers when he touched a button. He said they told him to “Throw your body at them (Americans)”.

The militants cornered Juma in a Taliban-controlled district in Ghazni province in southern Afghanistan.

“When they first put the vest on my body I didn’t know what to think, but then I felt the bomb,” Juma said at Forward Operating Base Thunder, the joint US-Afghan base in Ghazni. “After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help.”

Juma’s story could not be independently verified, but local government leaders backed his account, so too did the US and Nato military missions.

Abdul Rahim Deciwal, the chief administrator for Juma’s village of Athul, brought the boy and an older brother, Dad Gul, to a weekend meeting between Afghan elders and US Army Colonel Martin Schweitzer.

Col Schweitzer called the Taliban’s attempt “a cowardly act”.

As Deciwal told Juma’s story, 20 Afghan elders repeatedly clicked their tongues in sadness, some welled up, wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, denied the militant group used child fighters, saying it had hundreds of adults ready for suicide missions.