The story told by a wannabe suicide bomber who failed to detonate his explosives laden belt is both harrowing and instructive. It is significant because it helps to understand the way suicide bombers are motivated, inducted and sent to carry out their deadly missions. The 14-year-old Umer was lured away from his school, brainwashed and trained for six months till he was ready to act as a living bomb. He was led to believe that he was to launch a fidayee attack on infidels who were killing the Muslims in neighbouring Afghanistan. Surprised to find that he was being told to explode himself at a shrine where thousands of Muslim devotees had gathered, it was explained to him that these people were worse than non-believers. The would-be bomber has given the names of his handlers, one of them being Qari Zafar, known for organising multiple terror attacks in Pakistan. Qari Zafar, who is a Mehsud and was originally running training camps in South Waziristan, is now conducting the same gruesome activities on a large scale from North Waziristan where according to Umer 400 more boys are under training. In other words, the agency is being used as a staging post for attacks of the kind that killed 50 innocent people at Sakhi Sarwar last week.
The narrative exposes a number of loopholes in Punjabs security system. Special attention should have been paid to districts like Dera Ghazi Khan and Bhakkar which serve as entry points into Punjab for people coming from North and South Waziristan. The ease with which four young boys from the tribal areas and their handler crossed over into Dera city and continued to live for five days in a hotel unchecked by any agency raises many question about the efficiency of the local administration as well as provincial security agencies.
Security agencies in Pakistan are notorious for extorting confessions of their liking from those in their custody. There is a need therefore to probe further into the matter. If the story about 300-400 suicide bombers being trained in Mir Ali is correct, there is a need to go after those running the camps before they let their suicide squads loose on the unsuspecting people in the rest of the country.
