Daily Times

“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future” — John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

No section of society has suffered more than children in this ongoing war on terror. Apart from the hundreds of children who were killed or maimed as a result of three decades’ long militancy, millions are affected psychologically by this state-sponsored indoctrination, which has spread to schools, religious institutions, the media and the very homes they grow up in.

There is hardly any rescue and refuge for children. This vulnerable lot has been left at the mercy of the very powers that are leaving no opportunity to snatch their childhoods from them. Switch on to any news channel, read any newspaper — mostly in Urdu and one English paper in particular — and hear anyone, an intellectual or the common man, and all talk about religion, politics and militancy. Children hardly get a chance to watch their favourite television channels because of the mania for news channels on display by their elders. Even dinner tables are not spared discussion of these subjects.

Newspapers and TV channels regularly report the blowing up of schools and entertainment centres but they lack in the reporting of the emotional trauma children are going through and what needs to be done, not only for their emotional wellbeing but to immunise them from drifting into fundamentalism where they are used as easy tools to fight in the ‘path of God’.

Understandably, we have become insensitive emotionally and take these things in our stride. We are not able to feel the pain that scores of mothers feel about losing their beloved children and what these children feel living in a traumatised and paranoid society. TV channels and newspapers go about doing their factual reporting but they do not dig deep enough to reach the root causes behind this malaise and how to stop it from further growing. As a viewer, I know that I am expecting something from the anchors and reporters which they do not have the capacity of and will to do the kind of reporting required. Nor does any government agency take serious steps for the wellbeing of the affected children. These discussions rarely become a topic for the ratings-ridden talk shows, which look so surreal and where the guests seem devoid of any understanding of the gravity of the problem.

Four days before his martyrdom, I met Dr Farooq Khan in Mardan when he was working on a project for the de-radicalisation of around 150 young suicide bombers under the age of 18, previously recruited and indoctrinated by the Swati Taliban. I enquired of him about his findings after working for months with these children. He enlightened me with three main findings: first, 95 percent of the students came from government and private schools, second, the boys were indoctrinated by teachers of Islamic Studies and Arabic Studies in these schools and third, in all cases a father figure was missing. On whether the programme was working for these children, Dr Farooq Khan said that the main hurdle in achieving its objectives came from the distrust of these children for their teachers as they had been so deeply brainwashed at their former seminaries, which made them lose their innocence and humanity. Dr Farooq was indeed faced with absurd questions by his students, like whether he was sent by the Jews and Hindus to hatch their plot against the warriors of Islam. The good doctor sahib said, with the typical smile that always adorned his face, “Bringing them back to their life and childhood was not easy. There were things, which would look so trivial to us but were too big for them to overcome.” He further recalled how one student told him that he did not want the beard, which he had grown during his militant training, but was having difficulty in going back to his people with a shaven face.

During a personal interview with a suicide bomber, who later refused to carry out an attack and has now been rehabilitated, he told me, “I was not happy with my life, I wanted to get rid of it. It had nothing to do with God or going to paradise. Life had become a burden and I wanted to release it.”

“What made you suffer so bad that you wanted to take your and other’s lives?” I asked him. He had no clear answer to that, except that he found nothing good about life where there was no pleasure and entertainment, where cultures were torturous and the future was devoid of any hope. It was this defeatism that his militant trainers exploited, as according to him, he was told that since he was willing to die, why not do it for God and earn a place in heaven? When I asked what had changed his mind about suicide bombing, he said that it was during his stay at a camp on the Pak-Afghan border area where he noticed that the people who were running that camp were doing everything that was not Islamic, like smoking hash and abusing the young suicide bombers physically and emotionally. “I thought if this is what they are doing in the name of God, I am out and thus I availed the first opportunity to flee.”

His story substantiates my assessment that it is not just the religious indoctrination that is pushing children towards militancy but the very households in which they grow up.

(To be continued)

The writer can be reached at kaharzalmay@yahoo.com