Child soldiers: Adezai’s children fight for a better tomorrow

Pro-government militia comprises mostly of teenagers.

PESHAWAR:

As I stepped into Adezai militia chief Waqif Khan’s hujra, three children playing in the room began to cry and ran out of the room saying the Taliban had mounted an invasion. 

Children in Adezai area of Peshawar district are growing up with the sound of gunfire as clashes continue between the militia and the Taliban. The fear embedded into their minds will take a long time to go. “The sounds of gunfire and explosions have scared them, so much so that they consider every outsider to be a militant,” Waqif said.

The militia, which was formed by the government to engage militant extremists on the outskirts of Peshawar, mostly consists of teenagers who have just finished their secondary school.

Arsala Khan, a militia volunteer, said he passed secondary school two years ago and has since been taking part in active combat to clear the region of militants. Khan carries an RPG launcher while wearing a jacket loaded with magazine rounds. “How can I go to college? All the educational institutes have been blown up by these militants,” he said bitterly.

Arsala has thought of laying down his weapons but he knows he needs it to survive.

“If I leave this and start studying the Taliban will kill me just like they killed Kashif,” he explains. Kashif, the son of another volunteer, was killed on his way to Badhaber College.

“If we get an education we are killed by militants. If we are not killed we stay uneducated in this technologically-advanced era.”

Young boys here are being recruited as volunteers and all teenagers in the area have been given guns and rocket launchers to fight off militants. “The government is making killing machines out of them.”

Another teenager named Wasif, who got admitted in a college, quit his studies due to the ongoing conflict in the region.  “Who doesn’t want to get an education? But what can we do when the Taliban attack school and college-going students?”

I can either migrate from home and leave my people at the mercy of these extremists, or fight them to liberate tribesmen from their clutches, he said. “If the government restores peace in the region, everyone would run to admit themselves in schools and colleges,” he said.

Wasif claimed the government had withdrawn security forces and community police from the area and left them to hold off the Taliban on their own.  Militia chief Waqif said 127 young men had been lost in the last five years of conflict. This is not the Adezai’s war, and it’s not our responsibility to fight off militants, he said.  “We are fighting this war for the government and they should help us. The volunteers are using their own weapons and fighting at their own expense.”

Waqif said three community police officials were killed fighting militants in the area and none of their families were compensated under the martyrs’ package.

His family is a victim of the discrimination as well. His brother Mukamil Khan, a community police official, was among those shot dead. After he was killed, extremists called his family and asked: “Did you enjoy that? Next time we will send you a new gift.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2013.