Reform school attempts to offer child fighters chance at new life

* All students come to school after being captured by army, brought by families
* Taliban fighter says young boys ‘come to us willingly to present their lives’

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: In mountains surrounding Swat, Pakistani authorities say terrorists are preparing their newest generation of spies, shooters and suicide bombers, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. In the same village, under razor wire and the watch of soldiers, Islamabad is trying to give some of the recruits back their childhoods.

At a new school tucked near the fragile peace of Swat, peach-fuzzed veterans of Taliban camps wear burgundy sweaters to math classes, counselling sessions and religion lessons, where they hear that Islam favours democracy over suicide. Teachers work in fear of militant attacks and of hardened students — but also in hopes of de-radicalising the gangly boys who make up a growing part of the insurgency in the country, the paper reported.

Analysts say there is an urgent need to address the issue.

The country is home to the toxic mix of a significant youth population, few job prospects and a rising extremist insurgency. Military officials say most suicide bombings are now carried out by males younger than 20. The 86 adolescents at this army-sponsored school are a drop in that ocean, a fact that its director, neuropsychologist Feriha Peracha, said she tries not to dwell on.

“It can have a ripple effect,” Peracha said, as her students, ages 12 to 18, quietly took exams. “We are a time bomb if we don’t do this,” she said.

Although child soldiers have toted guns in conflicts worldwide, international experts say their indoctrination and reform has been poorly researched. Organisers of this boarding school — the first of its kind in Pakistan — say it is providing a valuable, if small, window into the backgrounds of Pakistan’s young fighters and the triggers that vault them into the hands of militants. .

All of them: All of the students came to the school after being captured by the army, or were brought here by their families. Some had been trained by insurgent groups as slaves or thieves, some as bombers.

Peracha said most of the boys were middle children who had been lost in the shuffle of large, poor families with absent fathers.

Come themselves: In a telephone interview, a Taliban fighter in North Waziristan denied that terrorists abduct children or force them to carry out bombings, saying young boys “come to us willingly to present their own lives”.