Background
Jawad's father was killed in a battle in Khost called Battle for Hill 3234 in January, 1988, and he continued to live with his mother in an Afghan refugee camp in Miran Shah, Pakistan.
Jawad was studying at a sixth or seventh-grade level at a school the United States later described as "Jihadi". Several years later, he was approached by four or six men at Qari Mosque in his hometown. They asked if he would be willing to take a lucrative job in Kabul, Afghanistan where recent government attention had been called to the need to remove landmines, and help clear Soviet-era mines from the region for a promised 12,000 Pakistani Rupees.
Jawad agreed, but said he would first need to secure the permission of his mother. The men told him to tell his family he had found a job across the border, but not to mention the details lest they worry about his safety. Some of his relatives tried to discourage him, saying he was too young for a job, but since his mother wasn't present, he decided to accompany the men.
Read more about this topic: Mohamed Jawad
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)