Aid from the UK is supporting a network of orthopaedic centres across Afghanistan to assist those affected by mobility disabilities, including hundreds of mine victims. Credit: DFID – UK Department for International Development/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 29 2015 (IPS)

No one will deny that when a child – any child – is killed, it is a tragedy. Imagine, then, the extent of the tragedy in Afghanistan where, in just four years, 2,302 children have lost their lives as a result of ongoing fighting in this country of 30 million people.

According to his latest report on children and armed conflict in Afghanistan, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon states that more kids were killed or maimed in 2014 than in any previous year under review.

During the reporting period from Sep. 1, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2014, an additional 5,047 young people were badly injured, leaving many crippled for life.

Ground engagements were reportedly the number one cause of child casualties, leaving 331 children dead and 920 injured in 2014; these figures represent a doubling of the number from the previous year.

Armed groups’ use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in populated areas resulted in 664 casualties, while suicide attacks took the lives of 214 children – an increase in 80 percent compared to 2013.

The report also stated that “explosive remnants of war killed or maimed 328 children”, while international military airstrikes left 38 kids either dead or injured – including eight from drone strikes alone.

The biggest culprits appear to have been the Taliban and the Hizb-e-Islami, followed closely by the Afghan National Securities Forces, who were responsible for 126 killings and 270 injuries.

Five kids were killed and 52 injured in cross-border shelling from Pakistan. The U.N. was unable to verify the cause of death in 163 cases, and chalks up a further 505 injuries to “crossfire”, without being able to attribute responsibility to any particular group.

“These tragically high casualty numbers show that children are bearing the brunt of the conflict, and unfortunately this trend continues with the deterioration of the security environment into 2015,” Leila Zerrougui, the Secretary-General’s special representative for children and armed conflict said in a press release last week.

Various actors, primarily the Taliban and similar armed groups, forcibly recruited an estimated 68 children into their ranks. In an even more troubling trend, kids continue to carry out suicide attacks for the Taliban and perform a range of dangerous or potentially life threatening tasks like planting IEDs or acting as spies.

Detention and torture of children is also a major cause of concern for rights activists, with the ministry of justice reporting 258 boys held in juvenile detention centres on charges relating to national security, including “association with armed groups”.

Between February 2013 and December 2014, the U.N. interviewed 105 child detainees, 44 of who claimed they had experienced ill-treatment or torture.

Another aspect of the conflict that directly impacts children here is the systematic and sustained attack on schools throughout the country.

U.N. researchers verified 163 incidents, including the placement of explosive devices within school premises, attacks on schools used as polling stations, threats against protected personnel or teachers, and the targeting of girls’ education by way of intimidation, propaganda, or physical attacks.

The U.N. believes that 469 Afghan schools are closed as a result of the shaky security situation, with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Taliban fighters reportedly active in most provinces around the country.

Children are also at risk of sexual assault – in the review period, eight boys and six girls were victims of sexual violence, with four of the verified cases traced back to the national police and one to a “pro-government militia commander.”

Furthermore, “Twenty-four boys and two girls were abducted in 17 separate incidents, resulting in the killing of at least four boys by the Taliban, the rape of two girls by the local police, and the rape of a boy by a pro-Government militia,” according to the U.N.

As a new government attempts to gain control over the situation, U.N. experts are hopeful that the deadly tide can be reversed.

“I look forward to working with the Government of Afghanistan even more intensively in the months ahead as we move towards fully implementing the country’s Action Plan for ending recruitment and use of children,” Zerrougui said at the report’s launch this past Thursday.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Captured Taliban members say poverty drove them into the arms of terrorism. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sep 4 2013 (IPS)

“I consider myself lucky after finding my son,” says Muhammad Jabeen, a juice vendor in Bannu, one of the 25 districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northern Pakistan. The Taliban had taken his son, Mateen Shah, away from a madrassa to join their ranks.

Jabeen says his son was only 16 when he was abducted in October 2011. The boy was taken to a half-destroyed building in Waziristan where he was given lessons in jihad. “His captors would have brainwashed him to become a voluntary suicide bomber had he not escaped after four months.”

The fundamental reason Mateen Shah was abducted was that he lived on the poor side of inequality that cuts through the area.“I was informed by a Taliban group that [Jawad] blew himself up in Afghanistan. The Taliban congratulated me to say that Jawad had gone to paradise.” -- Shaukat Ali, father of suicide bomber

“Bannu houses more than 100 religious schools where children from poor families are admitted because their parents cannot afford the high cost of education in modern schools,” Muhammad Jamal, a political science teacher at the Postgraduate College Bannu, tells IPS. At madrassas children are given free food and clothes.

Bannu has become a breeding ground for terrorism because the Taliban have recruited hundreds of boys for their fighting squads over the past 10 years, Jamal says.

Bannu is close to North Waziristan Agency, a Taliban hotbed. The Taliban routinely pick up boys from poor families in Bannu and train them to use guns, improvised explosive devices and to become suicide bombers, says Jamal.

Two boys who went missing along with Mateen Shah have still not been traced.

Police officer Khalid Khan tells IPS that the Taliban have kidnapped more than 500 children in the past five years. “About 40 have escaped but the whereabouts of others are not known.”

Orphans are known locally to be the most vulnerable to recruitment because they are easily “available”. The Taliban say they have no children in their ranks, but Khan says they have actively been recruiting orphaned and homeless young boys to train them in terrorism.

“Affluent people send their children to modern schools to get formal education. Terrorists hunt for young starving children to be trained to plant bombs, lay roadside traps or [be used] in fighting and for carrying out suicide attacks,” Khan said.

Fazl Hanan, a resident of Lakki Marwat district, says his nephew fell into Taliban hands after his poverty-ridden father employed him at a roadside restaurant. “He disappeared from the place. It was said that he used to meet with a few local Taliban members frequently. He may have opted to join them.”

Districts such as Lakki Marwat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Tank are thick with insurgents. They took refuge in the adjacent Federally Administered Tribal Areas after being evicted by U.S.-led forces from Kabul towards the end of 2001.

“These districts are all grounds for recruiting local children, especially those in madrassas or who have part-time odd jobs,” Khan said.

“The Taliban took away my son from an automobile workshop in March 2011 by promising him a lucrative job,” Shaukat Ali, a vegetable vendor from Charsadda district, told IPS. “Three months later, he (the son) called to say he was in Waziristan.”

Jawad Ali, who was 18 then, was his only son. The boy had been supplementing the father’s income to feed his 12-member family.

“We were hoping that Jawad would return. But I was informed by a Taliban group that he blew himself up in Afghanistan. The Taliban congratulated me to say that Jawad had gone to paradise.” Shaukat Ali was told his son had died in a suicide attack on U.S. soldiers.

Boys recruited by the Taliban do manage sometimes to escape. On Jun. 1, 2009 about 20 teenage boys escaped from Taliban custody. “The Taliban kidnapped us from religious schools in Dera Ismail Khan and kept us in a massive mud-built compound in Waziristan where we were lectured by a long-bearded man,” Imran Ali, 15, one of the kidnapped boys who escaped, told IPS. 

But he said some boys were happy that they were getting food without doing any work.

“I was also happy, but one of the boys explained to us that we would ultimately die in suicide bombing or some other terror act. We waited for an opportune time and escaped.”

Many of the boys picked up are never heard from again. Abdur Rehman, 15, was taken away in 2006 from the Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“Like 200 other boys who went missing in Swat, he is still untraced,” Muhammad Rehman, his father, a construction labourer, told IPS. “Since his disappearance, there is no clue. I don’t have resources to travel to Waziristan and locate him.”

Police officer Khan says that overall about 400 children recruited by the Taliban have been traced and arrested. “We have shifted them to internment centres where they are being de-radicalised. They are being given skills in tailoring, embroidery, carpentry, etc so they could start their business.”

Gul Muhammad, 19, is one of them. He was 14 when he went missing from Swat. In 2010, he was arrested from a Taliban training camp in Swat and sent to jail.

“I was shifted here from jail four months ago. I am learning tailoring and will start my business,” Muhammad, who was given a tailoring certificate in July at the interment centre, told IPS. “Now I am free from Taliban and will help my poor parents.”

But there are many poor where he came from. And that is where the Taliban look, and find.

On Apr. 16, 2013, a Taliban suicide bomber targeted a political rally organised by the Awami National Party (ANP). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Apr 17 2013 (IPS)

Bacha Khan Markaz, a two-storey building in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, is abuzz with activity. Located deep in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, whose northwestern tip borders Afghanistan, the building serves as the headquarters for the Awami National Party (ANP), which is gearing up for general elections on May 11.

But contesting major polls in a Taliban stronghold is no easy task. Tucked in between the flurry of press conferences and public meetings are warning letters, death threats and even assassinations.

"We do not fear the Taliban. We have been making sacrifices even before Pakistan itself came into being."
On Sunday, Apr. 14, ANP leader Mukarram Shah was killed in a bomb blast in the Swat valley, an administrative district of the KP. A prominent member of the Swat Peace Committee, Shah was alone in his car at the time of the explosion, which the outlawed Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) quickly claimed responsibility for.

TTP does not trouble to hide its hatred of the ANP, which has ruled the KP since 2008. In 2009, a major ANP operation evicted the Taliban from the Swat valley.

Following the Apr. 14 assassination, militants reiterated their stern warning to “secular” parties that opposition to the Taliban will not be tolerated.

All civilians have been instructed to stay away from rallies and public meetings – but the threats have fallen on deaf ears as, time and again, election hopefuls from groups like the ANP, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) come out into the streets, drawing crowds of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of supporters.

On Apr. 16, 2013, a Taliban suicide bomber targeted a political rally organised by the Awami National Party (ANP). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

And as the popularity of secular parties grows, so too does the wrath of the militants. On Tuesday, Apr. 16, a suicide bombing at an ANP public meeting in Peshawar killed 10 people.

Though visibly shaken by these attacks, the ANP is showing no sign of slowing down its campaign drive in this last push before Election Day – rather, it seems to be ramping up efforts.

The party has a long and proud legacy of taking up the cudgels on behalf of their countrymen and women. ANP Vice President and former Federal Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour tells IPS his party “does not fear the Taliban, as we have been making sacrifices even before Pakistan itself came into being.

“Our leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (known as Bacha Khan, or “king of chiefs”) spent 33 years in jail for fighting British rule and then later, fighting the Pakistan government for the rights of Pashtuns”, the country’s second-largest ethnic group, in what was then called the North-West Frontier Province.

Through years of struggle, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan helped residents of the province win the right to vote, while his son Abdul Wali Khan worked relentlessly to bring about some degree of provincial autonomy for the majority-Pashtun region.

Today, Bilour – who was injured in Tuesday’s suicide — is contesting elections for a seat in the 342-member National Assembly of Pakistan, which is responsible for electing the country’s prime minister.

While courting his constituency in Peshawar, Bilour faces strong opposition in the form of the beloved cricketer-turned-politician, Imran Khan, head of the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), which has not yet fallen out of favour with the Taliban.

But for people like Mushtari Bibi, a student in the political science department of the University of Peshawar, the choice is clear: “The ANP must win to establish peace and do away with militancy. If the ANP is kept out of politics, the country could fall to the Taliban,” the young student told IPS.

She says others parties have not openly criticised the Taliban as vehemently as the ANP.

The party has pledged to end militancy in this war-ravaged northern province that struggled against violence ever since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the government in Kabul and sent thousands of militants fleeing into the mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The ANP has also launched major development projects here; between 2008 and 2013 the party established over 30 colleges and universities, distributed free textbooks to students up to the 10^th grade, built the province’s first ever children’s hospital, and provided scores of scholarships to girls in rural areas to promote women’s empowerment.

The top priorities in its political manifesto are eradicating militancy, ensuring women and minority rights and providing healthcare, education and employment to the people in northern Pakistan, millions of whom have been rendered homeless or jobless by the militancy.

Over the years, the ANP has also won the sympathies of many of the province’s 25 million residents for withstanding “a merciless campaign of violence, launched against it by militants”, according to Bilour.

The party’s 2013 election campaign began in the Gul Bahar area of Peshawar on Monday, Apr. 7, just a few short months after Bilour’s younger brother and former KP Senior Minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour was assassinated by the Taliban in a suicide attack in December 2012.

According to Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, the ANP has “sacrificed too much” to call off its campaign in the face of threats and intimidations.

In total, the group has lost 750 members to attacks by the TTP. Rather than allowing the terror to deter them, however, Bilour and his fellow party members are determined to see the race through in order to convey their message of peace to the people.

“If we take the Taliban seriously and sit home instead of campaigning for the election, it would amount to leaving the field quite open to them — and, by extension, the religious parties who have a soft spot for militants – to consolidate their power. We don’t want that to happen,” Bilour said ahead of his election meeting in the historic Qissa Khwani Bazaar, where British troops massacred over 400 unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in 1930.

This rally, like most public gatherings hosted by the ANP, is expected to draw upwards of 5,000 people.

Some, like Peshawar University doctoral candidate Shehnaz Begum, believe an ANP victory will only mean more bloodshed and violence. “If they (ANP) win, it could snowball into a major crisis because the Taliban would never spare them for their secular views,” she told IPS.

She also echoed an oft-expressed sentiment here, that the ANP should refrain from “siding with the United States” against the Taliban, and should denounce “liberalism”.

Suicide bombers disguised as soldiers have stormed a court in western Afghanistan, killing at least 44 people in an attempt to free Taliban fighters standing trial, officials say.

At least nine fighters were also killed in Wednesday’s attack, which occurred in Farah, the main town of Farah province.

It was not immediately clear whether the accused men had escaped the court complex, although a hospital doctor said one prisoner was among those being treated for injuries.

The multiple bomb-and-gun assault will raise further questions about the Afghans’ ability to secure the country as NATO reduces its combat mission by the end of next year.

“I can confirm that 34 civilians, six army and four policemen have been killed and 91 people, the majority of them civilians, have been injured,” Najib Danish, interior ministry deputy spokesman, told AFP news agency.

“Nine attackers have also been killed.”

Highest death toll

The death toll was the highest in Afghanistan from a single attack since a Shia Muslim shrine was bombed in Kabul in December 2011, killing 80 people.

“The attack is over, but the casualties have unfortunately risen,” Mohammad Akram Khpalwak, governor of Farah province, told AFP, putting the final death toll as high as 46.

“In total, 34 civilians and 12 [Afghan] security forces have been killed in the attack. We have also discovered the bodies of eight attackers, more than 100 people have also been injured.”

Khpalwak said a group of Taliban prisoners had been brought for trial on Wednesday, without giving further details.

Abdul Rahman Zhawandon, spokesman for Khpalwak, said the area was sealed off as firing continued through the day and some attackers had also entered a Kabul Bank office attached to the court building.

Taliban fighting the government of Hamid Karzai claimed responsibility for the Farah attack.

“Our fighters attacked several government buildings in Farah according to their planned tactic. They conducted the attack with small arms and grenades,” the group said on its website.

“The fighting happened after information that [President Hamid] Karzai’s administration wanted to try several fighters in a cruel way in this court.”

Taliban fighters frequently target government compounds equipped with suicide vests, rockets and machine-guns.

“At around 8:00 am (0330 GMT) five attackers riding in two military-style vehicles drove to the provincial court building, one [vehicle] detonated at the gate and three attackers entered the building,” Agha Noor Kentos, police chief of Farah, told AFP.

Wounded being treated

Wakil Ahmad, a doctor at Farah hospital, said medics were treating scores of wounded including two judges and one court prisoner.

The governor’s compound was around 200 metres away from the scene of attack, an AFP reporter said.

Last year armed men dressed in Afghan police uniforms and wearing suicide vests stormed a government compound in Farah and killed seven people.

In November a roadside bomb planted by Taliban fighters killed 17 civilians, mostly women and children, on their way to a wedding party in Farah.

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, recalled meeting a former Taliban commander last week, when there was an attack on a police training headquarters, before Karzai travelled to Doha for talks on the possible opening of a Taliban office in the Qatari capital.

She said the Taliban commander told her there was still a war going on and that until the Taliban’s demands were met, among which was the release of Taliban prisoners, attacks such as the one on the police centre would continue in Afghanistan.

The Taliban insurgency has raged since a 2001 US-led invasion put an end to its five-year rule over large parts of Afghanistan.

The group has increasingly widened its attacks outside its main power bases in the east and south, where NATO forces have focused their attention, to other areas such as Farah which borders Iran.

NATO combat troops are due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, leaving responsibility for security to Afghan security forces.

However, there are fears that the violence will increase with their departure.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

In the late afternoon of Apr. 3, 2011, in the Pakistani city of Dera Ghazi Khan, an annual Sufi Muslim religious festival at the shrine of the 13th century saint Ahmed Sultan was hit by twin suicide bomb attacks which killed over 50 people and left more than 120 wounded.

As an eyewitness described the immediate aftermath of the bombings, “people started running outside the shrine. Women and children were crying and screaming. It was like hell”.

The bombers had struck a few minutes apart, instantly turning the atmosphere of festivity and prayer into a scene of carnage and horror. As crowds of worshippers fled in terror, an elderly woman ran into a young boy out of whose hands dropped a grenade. His name was Umar Fidai, a 15-year-old, and he was the third intended suicide bomber that day.

Fidai’s explosive vest had failed to detonate and as his handlers had instructed, he was attempting to kill himself and as many others as possible with the grenade they had provided him as a backup.

The Taliban denied responsibility for this 2011 attack in Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

In his own words in an interview later given to the Pakistani media, “There were three policemen standing close by, and I thought if I killed them too, I would still make it to heaven… At the time I detonated myself, thoughts of my family were not in my mind, I was only thinking about what the Taliban had told me.”

Fidai was shot and wounded by police and failed in his mission. But he is only one of the hundreds of other children that the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) are believed to have brainwashed and utilised as suicide bombers in their ongoing war with the state.

Brainwashing young people

Most are impressionable children from poor families who are indoctrinated through networks of religious schools which provide the only hope of advancement in isolated regions poorly served by the Pakistani government – although many are also procured through outright kidnapping and coercion by armed gangs.

Once in the hands of the TTP, the brainwashing of these sheltered, naive and suggestible young people for the organisation’s military goals proceeds. In Fidai’s words, “I thought that there would be a little bit of pain, but then I would be in heaven.”

A significant majority of suicide bombers in Pakistan are believed to be between the ages of 12 and 18, with some studies putting the number near 90 percent. Pakistani Taliban commander Qari Hussain has boasted that his organisation recruits children as young as five years old for suicide attacks, saying that “Children are tools to achieve God’s will, whatever comes your way you sacrifice it.”

There are an estimated 2,000 madrassas in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, a small yet significant percentage of which are believed to be involved in the brainwashing and indoctrination of young boys into militancy.

Students in these schools receive free board and education, something which on its face appears to be a remarkable opportunity for poor and isolated children whose parents cannot afford to send them to good schools, but which ultimately comes at a terrible price to both them and Pakistani society.

In one high-profile incident in early 2012, a convoy of cars carrying children, some as young as six, was intercepted while it was en route to religious schools where the children were allegedly to be trained as suicide bombers – the rationale for their utilisation being that they were “gullible” as well as less likely to be physically searched by police at checkpoints.

In a recent study by Hussain Nadim for the Islamabad-based National University of Science and Technology, several interviews were conducted with rescued child suicide bombers whom he described as being “not particularly religious, nor motivated by supposedly Islamic ideas, and (who) had no substantial animosity toward the United States or the Pakistan Army – they knew very little about the world outside their small tribe…

“The lack of access to TV, Internet, and formal education meant they were almost completely oblivious to such massive events as 9/11, and as such they were unaware of where and what exactly the United States was.”

In this context, such isolated and impressionable young people were highly susceptible to intensive brainwashing by Taliban militants who would make young recruits spend weeks watching videos of atrocities and of foreign troops raping women and girls – a fate which they said would await their own female relatives if they did not carry out suicide operations against Western and Pakistani government targets on behalf of the TTP.

‘Fear of losing mothers and sisters’

Furthermore, Nadim’s study concluded that most residents of the tribal areas where the Pakistani Taliban operate had little understanding or knowledge of the “War on Terror” being fought in their region, and were themselves allies of neither the Taliban, the West, or the Pakistani government.

Those young people who have agreed to take part in suicide bombings have in many cases done so particularly “out of fear of losing mothers and sisters” – a fear impressed upon them by their militant handlers’ extensive psychological manipulation.

Unbeknownst to them when they enrol their children in what are ostensibly religious schools, parents are denied access to their children once in the hands of the Taliban – a separation which is coercively enforced when parents realise that their young sons are being indoctrinated by their religious teachers in preparation for militant operations.

One parent described how he repeatedly pleaded with the Taliban to return his child but was denied. “We were threatened and told that the kids were working for a noble cause,” he said.

Cut off from parental contact, young, isolated children are easily susceptible to the influence of surrogate authority figures such as religious clerics in their madrassas. Many are told that they are acting in the name of Islam and will receive the reward of heaven if they successfully carry out their missions.

Studies of those rescued have also shown that most suffer from physical injuries, nightmares and trauma. Indicative of the cynicism with which they are exploited by militant organisations that see them as expendable, child suicide bombers are often sold to other groups and individuals wishing to carry out attacks for prices starting at 7,000 dollars – a grotesque financial utilisation of manipulated children by armed gangs.

In the words of Lahore-based researcher and psychologist Anees Khan, “These young boys are as much the victims of terrorism as those they kill. They are victims of the most brutal exploitation.”

Umar Fidai, despite losing his arm and suffering extensive burns to his body, is glad that he survived and did not successfully carry out his bombing mission.

After he was made to understand the true nature of the acts he was carrying out and the mainstream Islamic perspective, which stands unequivocally against both suicide and the murder of innocent civilians, he said to a Pakistani reporter from his hospital bed: “I am so grateful, because at least I have been saved from going to hell.

“I am in a lot of pain, but I know there are many people in hospital even more severely injured than me and I am so sorry for what I did… I now realise suicide bombing is un-Islamic… I hope people will forgive me.”

*Murtaza Hussain is a Toronto-based writer and analyst focused on issues related to Middle Eastern politics.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Al Jazeera or IPS.