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TALIBAN KIDS GO THROUGH TERRORIST TRAINING IN PAKISTAN
03-28-2010 6:04 pm - James Gordon Meek - NY Daily News
WASHINGTON - Pakistani terror camps are teaching children the three R's:

Reading, 'riting and Rage.

Taliban suicide schools dotting the Af-Pak tribal belt leave no child behind in the
deadly lessons. Graduates don't go to college - they blow themselves to bits in Afghanistan to find paradise.

Since 2005, when the Haqqani Taliban introduced suicide bombings in the Afghan war, kids have become a messenger of choice.

The suicide schools aren't new, but the processes of recruiting, training and
operations are detailed in a grim new report by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

The tiny Taliban enrolled in Pakistani camps dotting the battle-scarred landscape go through a curriculum not unlike their American counterparts - but
with a violent twist.

A typical day for the mostly Pashtun "fidai" - suicide bombers, who call other jihadis "common mujahids" - begins before dawn in camps numbering no more than 35 "students."

The black-turbaned recruits - typically 12 or 13 years old, with some as young as 7 - recite Koran verses until morning prayers.

They eat together, and then "driver's ed" takes on a sinister new meaning, according to writer S.H. Tajik, a United Nations law enforcement official, in the latest "CTC Sentinel."

Tajik drew his information from Pakistani government interrogations of nabbed
jihadis.

"After breakfast, most trainees receive driver's education and practice vehicle
maneuvers ... in preparation for vehicle-borne suicide attacks," he explained.

At one school, "six station wagons were available for this," Tajik wrote, citing
detainees grilled by officials in Islamabad. The kids clean camp until lunch, take a nap, then take more "outdoor driving lessons after having tea with cookies."

"I want to grow up with military training, to participate in fighting and, Allah willing, to perform a martyrdom operation," said a pint-size wanna-be in a 2008 Islamic Jihad Union video found by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Many never grow up. They are sent to bomb U.S. and coalition targets in
neighboring Afghanistan. Other kids are reclaimed by their families - though some run away and return to the Taliban schools.

"There was good food, pocket money, good friends and vehicles for driving,"
captured trainee Abid Mehsud said in his confession, the report says.

Terror groups on both sides of the border have hardly made the training and use of child suicide bombers a secret and have released videos about them as recently as January.

"Sick bastards," said one U.S. official, who confirmed that the West Point report
generally rang true.

At night, the students practice chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) 100 times.

Once a target is selected by a handler - no fewer than 10 victims allowed - they await the code word "marriage" or "wedding" in a cell phone call. The young aren't promised 72 virgins, but are told they may "recommend" friends and family to join them in paradise.




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