10-year-old Spozhmai has been here in safe house since January the 6th…. the day when she was found with a bomb on her.
“My brother Zahir and another man named Jabar put on my clothes and dressed me in the suicide attack vest. Then they gave me other clothes and told me to put on the dry one and go explode yourself in the security forces station.”
Spozhmai says she was encouraged by her brother who is a Taliban commander.
”When I was wearing the suicide vest, I told my brother that I felt cold. That I didn’t want to do this. But he encouraged me to go and do the attack. When I came near to the target, I didn’t know what happen... but I suddenly went far from the station and shouted to the police.”
Helmand Police Chief, Hameed Allah Sidiqi, says they found her crying.
“She was screaming for help. Then the police surrounded the place. Spozhmai’s brother had already escaped. We rescued her.”
The Taliban deny being involved in the plot.
But according to a UN report in 2012, more than 60 children were recruited by insurgent groups in Afghanistan.
Many were recruited by the Taliban to manufacture and plant bombs.
But observers say this was the first time a little girl has been told to blow herself up….
“We have heard that the Taliban used children in suicide attacks and mines planting. But this is the first time that a girl was sent out in a suicide attack,” says Abdullah Abid is from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Afghan police are now searching for the girl’s brother who is thought to have escaped.
Spozhmai’s father, Abdul Ghafoor, migrated to the Helmand province eight years ago to pursue a better life.
He says he couldn’t protect her daughter from the Taliban...
“Our lives were in danger. I can save myself but I can’t protect my daughter.”
Spozhmai is now in protective custody in the capital of Helmand.
President Hamid Karzay has ordered the police to bring her back home.
But the Human Rights Commission doesn’t think that’s a good idea.
“She’s not safe as she said herself, she will be a victim again.”
Spozhmai’s fahter asked President Hamid Karzay to give him a plot of land in another province.
But the girl wants to stay here for a while...
“I want to live here and don’t want to go back. If I go back, they will do the same thing again, forcing me to do the suicide attack like what they did before.”
