The Taliban have established schools on the outskirts of Pakistan's Karachi city where sermons are delivered to woo youths, said a teenaged would-be suicide bomber arrested Monday.In urban centers, the Taliban recruit from ow-income neighborhoods.
Taliban schools
They have a network of sympathizers who run radical Islamic schools, providing free education to the very poor. Typically, older Taliban fighters or recruiters spend an evening at one of these schools, glorifying the front lines, showing students videos of their heroics, and talking to them about paradise and the afterlife.
Sixteen-year-old Mohammad Salaam, a student of Class IX, had met Tehreek-e-Taliban leader Zahir Shah at one of these schools.
"Shah said that becoming a suicide bomber was my ticket to heaven, and on the Day of Judgement I would have nothing to worry about," Salaam said.
Later, Salaam discussed this with another TTP leader, Rauf, who also encouraged him to become a suicide bomber.
The teenager then made up his mind to go to Afghanistan and to blow himself up there. He told this to another leader Sher Rehman.
Rehman told Salaam that he didn't have any contacts in Afghanistan but that there were "ample opportunities" in Pakistan to become a suicide bomber.
Salaam said: "Sher Rehman said we do not know the fate of those who will be killed in my attack, but one thing was certain: I will definitely go to heaven."
The young man was encouraged to go to strife-hit Waziristan where he would be imparted further training.
"My meetings with Rehman and other leaders were usually at night, and never in public gatherings.
"Rehman told me that if I disclose my relations with them, they will behead my family and me. After getting caught, I have realised that I was engaged in vice," the teenager said.