Militants coerce children to carry out attacks: Report

US State Department highlights human trafficking problem and the threat to young children from militants in Pakistan.

A report released by the US State Department suggests that militants in Pakistan use children to fight or carry out suicide attacks.

In a statement delivered with the Trafficking in Persons report, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

“Every year, we come together to release this report, to take stock of our progress, to make suggestions, and to refine our methods. Today, we are releasing a new report that ranks 184 countries, including our own.”

The report stated that non-state militant groups were kidnapping children or forcing parents with false promises into giving children as young as 12 away.

It also said that these children would subsequently be used to spy, fight, or die as suicide bombers in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It added that militants often sexually and physically abuse the children. They also pressure the children into believing that the acts they commit are justified.

Referring to prosecution in such cases, the report said that since 2009, the government along with a local NGO, operated a rehabilitation center for boys who have been recovered from militant groups in the Malakand district.

The report placed Pakistan in the Tier 2 category.  It explained that countries included in this category were those “whose governments do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards” but are making substantial efforts to comply with those standards..

The report also highlighted the sex trafficking problem in Pakistan. It said that the largest human trafficking problem is bonded labor, concentrated in the Sindh and Punjab in agriculture and the brick making industry.

It stated that the Government of Pakistan was not completely complying with the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking. However, it added that the government  “is making significant efforts to do so” despite the increase in this problem due to the 2010 floods.

Earlier this month, security officials took into custody a nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped on her way to school and forced to wear a suicide vest by her captors. The girl, Sohana Javed, was then instructed to attack a police checkpoint in Lower Dir, police officials said.

She told reporters that she had been grabbed by two women and forced into a car carrying two men.

Last month, a young boy who requested that his identity remain anonymous, told The Express Tribune the story of how he was recruited by militants. His school had been closed for many months in 2008 because of the security situation and so he continued his education at a local mosque in Mingora.

He recalled, “The teacher at the mosque took us on outings to the mountains where men would give us guns to fire.” It was only on his fifth or sixth trip to the area – which his father believes to be Chuprial – that the ideological indoctrination began. “The men there would tell us that martyrdom was a reward from Allah. But we were more excited about the guns. They would also tell us not to talk to our families about this and that we should even turn against our families if they did not approve.”