5 Steps To Turn An Innocent Child Into A Suicide Bomber

Documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy spent a year with Taliban recruiters and children who were training to become suicide bombers.

Her mission? To understand how the Taliban convert children into live ammunition, and why the children actively sign up to their cause.

Based on first-hand, up-close personal observation, Obaid-Chinoy believes the Taliban use a powerful five-step process to indoctrinate and brainwash young boys into killing themselves and others in a bloody campaign that claimed scores of lives in 500 bomb blasts in Pakistan in 2009 alone.

In brief, she says the Taliban:

1. Prey on poor families who live in rural areas and who have lots of children
2. Teach the children the Quran in Arabic, a language they don’t understand, distort the Quran’s message to suit Taliban purposes, and cut the children off from all other sources of information
3. Imprison the children in an environment of hatred, fear and deprivation from which they cannot escape
4. Entice them with the glory of martyrdom: milk and honey, virgins in paradise and a heroic legacy
5. Hammer home a powerfully emotional message about an uncaring West using videos interspersed with images of dying civlians

See more of this compelling eight-minute TED talk: