KEVIN TOOLIS: How I came face to face with Taliban teen killers

Intent to kill: Farman Ulla and Abdul Quboshi, both 16, were captured before their bomb exploded

This is a look deep into what makes islamic terrorists tick and how they are created. Kevin Toolis interviews a failed 16 year old Afghan suicide bomber.

FROM THE DAILYMAIL.CO.UK:

KEVIN TOOLIS: How I came face to face with Taliban teen killers
By Kevin Toolis

Last updated at 11:58 PM on 19th December 2008

Here I am deep inside the secret police headquarters in Kabul in a shabby office.
The walls are filthy, the furniture stained and the telephones look as if they were installed by the Russian invaders back in the Eighties.
And then the door opens and the Taliban’s terrifying new weapon is ushered in — the child suicide bomber.

Farman Ulla is just 16, though he looks much younger. He is thin, malnourished and with a face scarred by acne.
It is hard to believe this scrawny boy is a terrorist.
He was captured by Afghanistan intelligence agents while on a mission to detonate a bomb which would have killed himself and dozens of others in Jalalabad.

If he lost his nerve then his ‘back-up’ — another boy — would detonate the bomb for him by remote control.
It was a boy just like Farman, grinning from ear to ear as he pushed an explosive-laden wheelbarrow, who killed three Royal Marines in Helmand with his suicide bomb last week.

I’ve come to Kabul to this secret police headquarters to find out just how the Taliban can convince an Afghan boy to become a human bomb.
The first question I ask Farman is about death: is he not afraid of dying?
‘Oh no, even before you blow yourself up the virgins come to the site of the explosion and wait for you to take you to paradise,’ he says confidently, parroting his Taliban masters, who promise suicide bombers they will be rewarded with virgins for their act.

Then, chillingly, he smiles. As he looks at me with his boyish grin, the door of the interrogation room opens again and Farman’s accomplice, Abdul Quboshi, is brought in.
In the corner of the room on the floor is a suicide bomb vest similar to the one worn by Farman.
READ IT ALL: