Taliban Buys Children To Be Suicide Bombers

Faced with a shrinking supply of willing martyrs, the Taliban in Pakistan is now purchasing children as young as 7 years old to be suicide bombers.  The going price for a child bomber: $7,000 to $14,000.  In Pakistan, where the average yearly income is $2,600, there are many traffickers looking to kidnap children and sell them to the Taliban. 

The leader of the Pakistan Taliban and mastermind behind the traffick-children-to-be-suicide-bombers scheme is Baitullah Mehsud, who evaded capture by U.S. troops as recently as last week.  A U.S. Defense Department official, speaking anonymously, told reporters recently,

"Mehsud has turned suicide bombing into a production output, not unlike the way Toyota outputs cars." 

And it looks like he's basing this grotesque new industry on children. 

The use of children in war is unfortunately not new.  Child soldiers are being used right now, in conflicts around the world.  But trafficking children to be suicide bombers feels especially evil for some reason.  Perhaps it's because, theoretically (if not practically), a child soldier would have a sliver of hope of survival, whereas a child suicide bomber is doomed.  Perhaps it's because the children being used in Pakistan are so young. 

I am still shocked by the new and innovative ways human beings develop to abuse, torture and destroy each other.  It was naïveté on my part to assume that the industry of suicide bombers would not follow the rules of supply and demand that guide all other industries of trafficked persons.  But it obviously does.  And now we have the sad duty of adding a new variation of human trafficking to the long and growing list.

Image from timenewsgloaming.com