Good and Evil through the Eyes of a 14-year old

Usaid Barho  Reenacting His Surrender

There is an international story circulating about a 14-year old Syrian boy who was seduced into service with ISIL (or ISIS, IS) and figured out that by volunteering to become a suicide bomber he could escape from the radically, fanatic militant group.

Usaid Barho, 14, is the latest in a string of children who are victims and heroes in the barbaric conflict being waged across the Levant. The article in the New York Times titled, How a Syrian Boy, Sheathed in Explosives, Escaped the Islamic State's Hold, details how Usaid left his home in Syria and eventually wound up in Iraq with a vest bomb strapped around his body in from of a mosque that the ISIL fighters wanted him to bomb.

There are so many things wrong with this situation:

1. A 14-year old being used as a suicide bomber

2. Religious persecution

3. The target was a house of worship

4. The threat of abuse of his Mother and Sister if he did not fight for ISIL

But, there are a few things right with this tory:

1. A boy who knows right from wrong

2. A daring plan that saved not only himself but many other innocents

3. A security officer not afraid to separate the bomb vest from the boy.

I urge you to read the New York Times story to get a sense of what is happening in the region. 

Here is an excerpt:

Usaid said he still planned to become a doctor, and hoped to study in Turkey. He said that he missed his mother, and that the Iraqis had promised to return him to his parents one day.

Before the war, he said: "We were a normal family. It was just a normal life."

Whether he has a chance at a normal life again depends, in part, on how the Iraqis treat him: as a terrorist or as an exploited child.

We need to be aware that the pain, persecution, and suffering being experienced by the people of the region is real and we need to be reminded that life there is very different than life here.

-- Bob Doan, Elkridge, MD