Child Suicide Bomber

Why am I even writing these words, one after the other: 

Child Suicide Bomber.  

What has our world come to?

****

It is sunset, and I am driving on the west road.   Between me and Afghanistan stands a foreboding chain linked fence, topped with a threatening spiral of sharp razorwire.   Dust creates orange hazy halos around objects, silhouetted by the gigantic setting desert sun.   There are square houses of stucco mud, scrawny trees, scattered green desert brush. 

There are rows and rows of rock topped dirt mounds,  where unskilled laborers have walked, outside the fence, tapping long sticks on the ground, looking for remnant land mines from the Soviet war era of the 1980s.     Each mound represents a suspected land mine. 

The Soviets, apparently, upon their withdrawal, "lost" the maps which indicated where they had laid these mines.  Current military forces are trying to identify them, and somehow deactivate them.

There are hundreds of mounds, just outside the fence.  Perhaps thousands.

Goats and goathearders roam this land, taking their chances.  Because...what other alternative do they have?

This is, perhaps, a horrific picture.  But it is not new to me.  The view has become, morbidly, commonplace.

But today, on this drive there is something new.  Something unexpected.

The window of my truck is rolled down in the scorching heat, and as I drive along, I hear the sound of... singing?   I slow, and my eyes search;  off in the distance, beyond the rock topped mounds,  I spy five girls, 100 meters from me, in flowing female dress, standing upon a rocky elevation, dancing and singing and waving their arms above their heads.  They see me, in my truck, and appear to be trying to get my attention.   They sing and laugh, and wave happily, excitedly.    

I am reminded of the Haitian children who used to chase our medical truck through the back neighborhoods of Port au Prince.    "Hey, You!" they would call excitedly as we drove past, sometimes chasing us with child-filled delight.  "Hey, You!" I would call back, and we would laugh at each other, and wave in that small moment of human connection.

I stare at the girls as I slow my truck slightly.  They are different ages, I can see, different sizes, silhouetted against the sun.  In the darkening light of sunset, I can see that their clothing is colorful, pretty, female, beating slightly in the evening wind.  They are barefoot.  They are graceful and feminine as they dance against the sunset.

I have never seen an Afghani woman here.  I have never seen a girl.   Just men and boys, who stare at me sometimes with palpable negativity, due to my unscarved head, and the multitude of political and cultural and religious violations that it represents.

They are beautiful, these female creatures.  The energy of children.  I wave back at them through my open window.  Suddenly, they start to jump up and down; I hear their laughter and squeals accelerate, as they realize they have made contact.  They wave more vigorously.  I laugh, too. 

"Hey, You!" I whisper, with a smile.

I wonder if they can see, from their vantage, that I, too, am a girl.  I wonder if they can see my long hair.  I wonder if that makes them wonder...   Or, am I just another truck passing by.

"That's so awesome," I say as I pass them.

And strange. 

And unexpected.

And extremely suspicious.

My companion in the seat to my left says, "Be careful.   They might be trying to get you to slow down, so someone behind them can shoot you."

Oh.

Afghanistan.

****

I am walking into the Military Hospital to check on a patient.   A nurse is guiding five figures out the front door towards a parked truck.

"Are you all doing okay?" she asks with matronly concern as she turns back briefly to glance at them.

I walk past them as I enter the building.  They are soldiers, dressed in desert camouflage and blank distant stares.   They look grim.  Empty.  Perhaps shattered, emotionally.  They do not meet my eyes.

Their faces are covered with multiple small lacerations.

Shrapnel injuries.

They are likely being guided towards the Warrior Recovery Center  -- bunks where soldiers involved in explosions go for mandatory monitoring, and to receive rehab of possible traumatic brain injuries.  They appear shell shocked.

What happened to these men, I wonder.  An IED?   What is the cause of their blank, grim stares.  Is this emptiness brain injury from concussive force?  Or soul injury, from seeing a best friend killed in front of their eyes?   The most common traumatic injury seen in this hospital are lower extremity amputations from walking over or driving over explosives.  These men are walking away.  Do they ponder the ones who could not?

I walk down the hall to the 10 bed ward where my patient is resting.  Yesterday it was empty, save my patient and another man.  Today it is full.

I look around. More shrapnel wounds visible on exposed faces and extremities.   Bandages.  Grim faces.  

"Boy, it was busy in here last night," one of the older patients tells me.

I look around at the beds.  One face is the clean shaven face of an Afghani man.    He appears kind.  He is a local man, a translator, putting his own life at risk to work with the ISAF.  A trusted and essential colleague of the American forces; their only voice to communicate effectively with and understand the local people.

He had one final translation before he ended up in this hospital bed.  One final searing, life altering conversation.

He was standing with a group of American soldiers, who were stopped for a rest on an afternoon patrol.  The unit was approached by a teenage boy.  As the boy came closer, he suddenly stopped, and revealed to the soldiers he was wearing a bomb strapped to his chest.

Immediate stunned silence.

The translator called out to the child to stop.   Stop!    He tried to negotiate with him.    Stop, stop, STOP!    You don't want to do this!  Why would you do this?!    He tried to talk the boy out of it.

The boy told the translator that the Taliban had promised him, if he blew himself up in a crowd of American soldiers today, that his family would receive US$300,000.

And so.

With a click of a hand-held triggering device.

In a crowd of American and Afghani soldiers and translators...

He did.

****

The newspaper said yesterday that in a Southern Province of Afghanistan, a suicide bomber attacked a group of ISAF forces, causing an unknown number of casualties, including a number of suspected deaths.

There were no other details.

The story was never revisited.

It did not mention that the bomber was a child.

****

AP News:  February 2012, in Kabul, Afghanistan: 

Afghan police have intercepted 41 children whom insurgents were planning to use as suicide bombers, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.   Four suspected insurgents were about to smuggle the children across the mountains into Pakistan from eastern Kunar province on Friday, said Sediq Seddiqi, the spokesman.

"We strongly believe that the children were being taken to Pakistan to be trained, brainwashed and sent back as Afghan enemies," Seddiqi said.

The children are aged between 6 and 11, he said.