Spin Boldak, Afghanistan: At first glance Mohibullah looks an ordinary Afghan teenager, wide-eyed with a tender smile, a little peach fuzz and a boyish dream of becoming a kick boxer. But this 15-year-old is languishing in prison -- jailed after the Taliban preyed on him to become a suicide bomber.
The runaway teen was apprehended in 2014 as he was about to blow himself up outside a district governor's office. A failed mission that has left him locked up in juvenile detention in southern Kandahar city.
Mohibullah's eyes welled up as he described how he was indoctrinated about the glories of martyrdom as a shortcut to a paradise, filled with chaste virgins and lakes of milk and honey.
"You will feel no pain when you detonate your suicide vest," he quoted one of his handlers as saying in an AFP interview inside the prison.
"You will instantly be in heaven's embrace."
His handlers, he said, made him choose from a list of five high-profile targets. He picked one he considered pregnable: the district chief of Arghandab in Kandahar, a lush region filled with grape and pomegranate groves.
With hugs, garlands and the promise of an eternal afterlife, he said he was taken on a circuitous journey to Arghandab, passing from one handler to the next, spending nights in the back of cars.
Tipped-off officials arrested him before he could reach his target and he was sentenced to four years in a juvenile prison.
Mohibullah claimed during the interview that his indoctrination took place at one of the thousands of unregulated madrassas in Pakistan, many funded with Saudi money.
Afghan officials claim they are a prime Taliban recruiting ground.
Kabul has fraught relations with Islamabad, which it blames for sponsoring the insurgency, and the Pakistani government recently admitted after years of official denial that the Taliban leadership enjoys safe haven inside the country.
Observers in Pakistan fear the seminaries are breeding grounds for intolerance or even extremism, with repeated calls for more oversight.
"The madrassas in Pakistan's tribal grounds are factories of suicide bombers," Brian Williams, who conducted a CIA study on suicide terrorism in Afghanistan, told AFP.
Last month a 12-year-old would-be suicide bomber surrendered to Afghan forces in eastern Nangarhar province.
The Taliban sent him to kill "infidel troops", he told local media, but he had last-minute misgivings after seeing soldiers praying inside a mosque.
AFP tracked down Mohibullah's family in a mud-walled house in Spin Boldak, a notorious town along the opium-smuggling route on the Pakistan border, who verified many of the personal details in his story.
Quietly sobbing behind her veil, Mohibullah's mother pleaded his innocence.
"He is scared of cats. How can he become a suicide bomber?" she insisted, adding that she can hardly afford to feed her six children let alone hire legal help.
"When I met him in prison, I asked 'why did you run away from home?' He cried, hugged me and said 'Take me home'."
The words "zakhmi zada" (broken heart) are inscribed on the door of Mohibullah's tiny prison cell, which he shares with nine other inmates.
