The US military commander in Afghanistan has said the killing of Osama Bin Laden may weaken al-Qaeda’s influence on the Taliban. Even so, warned Gen David Petraeus, Afghanistan could still become a potential refuge for international terror groups. Meanwhile, members of Congress have been calling for US troops to hasten their withdrawal. Paul Wood reports from Kabul on the course of the Afghan war now that Osama Bin Laden is dead.
The news conference had been called, said the Afghan official, to show us four children recruited by the Taliban as suicide bombers.
A shocked hush fell over the room when they were actually brought in. They seemed ridiculously young, small figures dwarfed by the soldier leading them onto the stage.
We discovered later that they were aged just eight to 10. In their brightly coloured shalwar kameez – freshly pressed for the occasion – they giggled, not sure what to make of the TV cameras and flashes.
Hopping nervously from foot to foot, Faizil, recited the story of what had happened to them.
Categories: Afghanistan, Children
What will a peace deal with the Taliban entail for the people of Afghanistan? Will Afghans return to the brutalized lives they led under the Taliban leadership? What will become of the human rights violations that occurred here, which once so consumed the world? Was Pakistan in the right all along—concerned that the foreign forces that arrive in their backyard don’t stay long enough to affect any real change, and leave the status quo precisely as it was?
Even more urgently: what will become of these children and the hundreds, if not thousands of others, like them? What has this war done for them? What has it done to them?