PESHAWAR, Aug 7: He was a quiet, lonely character, always sporting a smile. So, he laughed back when his suspecting family quizzed him about his unusually long stay in Quetta. And they probably would still have been in the dark, when in the wee hours of Saturday, at around 3am, a knock at their door awakened them to a rude shock.

On July 22, their son Aminullah had blown himself up along with another suicide bomber while slamming their explosives-laden car into a coalition vehicle in Afghanistan’s south-western Kandahar, killing two Canadian soldiers and eight others. The late-night mysterious visitors from a banned militant outfit delivered a hand-written message to his father. The 23-year-old boy wrote: “Don’t shed your tears for me, for this had been my life-long dream to fight Jihad and embrace Shahadat (martyrdom). I am going to a suicide bombing (mission) and I am doing so on my own free will. You may not see my body, grieve not. I have chosen it to be so.”

Banners lauding Aminullah’s ‘courageous act’ now greet visitors to his house in a village about 35 km to the north of Peshawar to sympathise with his family. The news was all the more shocking for his family since the lad was never known to have picked up a fight or quarrel with anyone. “He was not the type,” his cousin Karim told Dawn. “He was a quiet, introvert sort of a person.”

Son of a retired subedar major from the Frontier Corps, Aminullah had followed into the footsteps of his father and joined the paramilitary force. His last posting was in Balakot, Mansehra, devastated by the October 8 killer earthquake. It is unclear whether he deserted his force or resigned from it, but his family said that Aminullah had told them that he had quit the Frontier Corps about six months ago to join the tablighee jamaat, the community of preachers.

Amin had never had any contact with militants or association with any religious or sectarian outfit while he cleared his tenth grade from a local school. So, for his family it remains a mystery as to how this young man came into contact with Jihadis.

His cousin said that Amin remained incommunicado for about three months until 15 days ago when he called his family from Quetta. “His sisters and mother cried on the phone and begged him to return,” Karim recalled. “No one in the family knew what he was up to. He had never consulted anyone nor told any family member of his intentions, otherwise we would have stopped him,” Karim said.

His will delivered to his family said that he was going in the way of Allah and it had been his dream to embrace martyrdom. “I am doing so of my own free will and I have not been forced by anyone,” Aminullah wrote to his family.

“The dishonoured infidels have caste an evil eye on our religion. Had Allah given me one thousand lives, I would have sacrificed it in His way a thousand times.

“It had been my desire since childhood to take part in the Jihad.”

Amin was not a madrassah graduate but his death is likely to spark a debate on the reasons why an increasing number of young men of his age are offering themselves for such a sacrifice.

Taliban Commander, Mullah Dadullah, had claimed in an interview that he had hundreds of potential suicide bombers ready to take on the US and allied coalition forces, and the spate of suicide bombings in recent weeks have come to prove his chilling warning.

Security officials warn that claims by the one-legged Taliban commander notwithstanding, the figure of would-be suicide bombers waiting in the wings in Pakistan’s restive Waziristan and neighbouring Afghanistan certainly run into hundreds.

“The thrust of their training is more on religious indoctrination, motivating would-be bombers to kill themselves in the way of Allah.

They are taught lessons in driving vehicles and motorbikes and they are given explosives vests or explosives-laden vehicles. All they are required to do is to push the button or pull the latch. It is as simple as that. You don’t need an academy to teach how to be suicide bombers,” one official said.