excerpt:

> His son earned A’s in high school, had a decent salary in a
> military hospital and received spending money from an uncle in
> Canada. How could he have gone so wrong?
> > A Pakistani military psychiatrist is trying to answer that
> question. In a study of 24 young men who were involved in
> terrorist attacks in Pakistan, the psychiatrist, Brig. Mowadat
> Hussain Rana, has found that they tend to be the younger or middle
> siblings in families of six or more children. The households are
> not always poor but are often violent, and the youngsters get lost
> in the chaos.
> > “He’s that boy who is not in a rigorous system of rule setting,”
> Brigadier Rana said in an interview in Rawalpindi. “He becomes
> someone who drifts, who spends afternoons hitting stray dogs, and
> no one notices.”
> > His parents, at their wits’ end, take him to a mullah, hoping to
> instill discipline, the theory goes. The two develop a close
> relationship, sometimes even sexual, giving the boy the attention
> he has long craved. The mullah then introduces him to others, men
> who make him feel important, as if he is part of something bigger
> than himself.

Read the full article | Print this article