The video cannot quite avoid the impression of a childish game. The boy selected for the martyrdom operation, dressed in black, walks down a line of his young friends, embracing each one for the last time. The camera seems to be held at adult-height. It follows the bomber as he walks towards his target – another group of children. One of them tries to stop him, but he evades the security. A plume of dust is thrown up in the air in an uncanny simulation of an explosion. The bomber and his targets lie on the ground, pretending to be dead, trying to keep the smiles off their faces.
When this video popped up on the Internet earlier this year, many in Pakistan were deeply disturbed by the story it told of how children have become psychologically and physically involved in the violence in the country. According to Salma Jafar of Save the Children UK in Pakistan, 'It's horrifying and alarming. These children have become fascinated by bombers rather than condemning them. If they glamorise violence now, they can become part of it later in life.'
In both Pakistan and Afghanistan, hundreds of children have been among the civilian victims of ground fighting and air strikes. Suicide bombings were introduced to the war in Afghanistan in 2003 (during that year there were two such attacks), and became increasingly common after 2005. The tactic spread from there to Pakistan. During the Islamabad Red Mosque siege in 2007, mothers sympathetic to militancy dressed their children in suicide-bomber costumes, with fake bomb vests. An increasing number of children have been made to wear the real thing.
As many as 90 percent of suicide bombers in Pakistan are 12 to 18, according to editor and author Zahid Hussain. In July, a child bomber as young as nine was arrested while trying to cross from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Analysts say that a string of individual cases show that some of the child suicide bombers used in Afghanistan are recruited and trained in Pakistan before being sent – or sold – to be used in attacks across the border. The price of a child bomber, reportedly between USD 7000 and USD 14,000, depends on how close to the target they are expected to get.