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Boy, 9, is war's willing mascot©Los Angeles Times
© St. Petersburg Times, BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan -- Nasir Aqa is a front-line mascot, a little boy who brings bread and water to soldiers and learns the ways of war at their feet. The 9-year-old Afghan has already shot a Kalashnikov rifle at the enemy and has seen younger comrades die under fire. He lives with his father, mother and four brothers and sisters on the edge of this ruined air base, which is controlled by the anti-Taliban forces of the Northern Alliance. The Taliban regime's troops are dug in just over a mile away and regularly fire artillery at the airport and Nasir's village. Now fighter jets are dropping bombs nearby. Nasir finds it all great fun. War scared his son when he was younger but not anymore, Mir Aqa said through an interpreter. "It doesn't have any bad effects," the father said. "He doesn't cry." Then Aqa admitted that might not be so good. "Fighting is bad," he said, as Nasir clung to his leg. "Everyone should be afraid of that." Less than an hour after he spoke Monday, two fighter jets that appeared to be U.S. F/A-18 Hornets roared over Bagram and began dive-bombing Taliban targets just north of Kabul, the Afghan capital. They came in from the east about 4:10 p.m., just before Muslim prayer time -- two silver darts, glinting in the sunset, that bombed and circled and then struck again. Bright orange blasts sent roiling columns of smoke and dust hundreds of feet into the air. Northern Alliance troops monitoring field radios on a rooftop observation post said a frantic soldier had reported that at least one bomb exploded inside alliance-held territory, near the main highway turnoff to Bagram. The soldier made no mention of any casualties in the report, which he repeated several times. It could not be independently confirmed. Other walkie-talkie reports said the two main targets were Qalai Nasro and Qarabagh, 25 miles and 15 miles north of Kabul, respectively. "The first two bombs didn't quite hit the place we wanted, but the second two looked as if they got it exactly," Gen. Babajan, the Northern Alliance's commander at Bagram air base, told his men by radio. By 4:40 p.m., the jet noise had trailed off. A man in the yard next to the observation post continued his prayers. Monday afternoon, when a Taliban artillery shell whooshed overhead, Nasir didn't flinch. He was more interested in hearing the news bulletin on his father's shortwave radio. The child knows too well what an incoming shell sounds like. He has a soldier's ear when it comes to judging how close it's likely to land. This one would explode in the distance, with a muffled thud. Nasir is the troops' willing servant. He brings them meals at 7 a.m., noon and 7 p.m. -- unless fighting interrupts his schedule. Nasir gets up at dawn each day and spends an hour studying the Koran at a mosque. He doesn't get paid for delivering food, but sometimes one of the men tips him with a 10,000-afghani note, which is worth about 25 cents. Nasir makes the deliveries more for the soldiers' company anyway. He spends hours each day sitting with them at a guard post on the air base, which the Soviets built to support their 10-year occupation of Afghanistan. During the civil war that followed the Soviets' 1989 withdrawal, Bagram was reduced to ruins. The airport and surrounding villages have changed hands three times since the Taliban took Kabul in 1996. Nasir was only 4 years old then. Three years later, when he wasn't much taller than an AK-47 assault rifle, the child fired one for the first time. "I shot at the Taliban," Nasir said Monday, and he grinned. To show he wasn't making up his knowledge of weapons, the boy took a soldier's Kalashnikov, cradled it in the crook of his arm and pulled the bolt with a loud clack to load a round in the chamber. Then he tilted the weapon to reach the safety, which he unlocked. He was about to put his finger on the trigger when one of the laughing soldiers grabbed the gun. "He is very smart and he learns fast," said Aqa, an air force radio operator for the Northern Alliance and combatant for 12 years. "He listens to his father and mother. He fights with other children sometimes, but they're just playing, not really fighting -- just for a few minutes." Nasir, who is in second grade when he isn't sitting with the soldiers, said he hopes Afghanistan's more than two decades of war will be over by the time he is old enough to be a soldier. He would rather be a teacher.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
