Teenagers who were brainwashed by the Taliban are being deradicalised in a pioneering project that aims to reclaim stolen youth, writes MARY FITZGERALDin northwest Pakistan
A WATERY winter sun begins its descent over the Malakand Pass, casting long shadows over the teenage boys in maroon sweaters playing volleyball on a sandy court ringed by jagged mountains. Apart from the picturesque surroundings, the scene is unremarkable – it could be the end of another school day anywhere in the world. But this is the southern edge of the Swat Valley, in troubled northwest Pakistan, where swaggering homegrown Taliban once held sway. The youths lunging for the ball were among the thousands, many barely in their teens, who were lured or coerced into their ranks as foot soldiers.
The armed guards, blast walls and razor wire show this is no ordinary boarding school. Here, amid the whitewashed classrooms and well-tended playing fields, a team of Pakistani psychologists and teachers has established a pioneering rehabilitation project designed to reclaim the stolen youth of boys who fell under the influence of militants. For many of the 142 adolescents currently enrolled at the school – named Sabaoon, which means “first light of dawn” in Pashto – the standard curriculum mixed with counselling sessions and vocational training is their first taste of formal education. Just under half were rounded up during military operations against the Taliban. A similar number were turned in by their desperate parents. The remainder, say army officers involved in the initiative, surrendered themselves.
On arrival, the youths, who range between 12 and 17 years old, are assessed and graded according to the risk they present. At one end of the spectrum are those considered relatively low risk: they do not show signs of pathological behaviour; they may not have handled weaponry; and their families have no known links to the Taliban. Most were used as lookouts, errand boys or informers. Others dug roads and tunnels, or cooked for the militants. At the other extreme are the youths who were trained as armed fighters, took part in attacks on the military, and were subject to the most intensive indoctrination. A chosen few were being groomed as suicide bombers.
“For me the most heartbreaking cases are those children who were told that one day they would wear a [suicide bomb] jacket,” says Dr Fariha Peracha, one of Pakistan’s leading psychologists. She has been involved with the Sabaoon project from the outset, after the army asked her to evaluate 12 youths recovered from Taliban camps to see if they could be rehabilitated. According to analysts, most suicide bombings in Pakistan are now carried out by males under the age of 20. Since 2007 thousands of lives have been claimed in hundreds of such attacks.
“The children tell me that they were told that after they wear a jacket they will have a very good life in the afterlife, with an abundance of milk and honey and beautiful women,” says Dr Peracha. “It is so sad that these children felt they did not have a present. They had no faith in the present, and they didn’t believe they could do anything in this life. The idea was put in their heads that they needed to kill to get out of where they were and go to a better place. I don’t think they realised the horror they were involved in.”
She and her colleagues have detected interesting patterns while researching the backgrounds of their charges in an attempt to understand what propelled them into the arms of the Taliban. Surprisingly few had attended the religious seminaries known as madrassas that are often blamed for stoking militancy in Pakistan. Most are middle children born into large families mired in poverty. Fathers and other male authority figures were often absent – in Swat many men are forced to seek work abroad, in Dubai or Saudi Arabia.
“Most of the boys did not have a good schooling or dropped out of school, so they were already vulnerable and they were compromised,” Dr Peracha says, adding that in many respects their profiles fit those of juvenile delinquents elsewhere. Such youths were easy prey for the black-turbaned militants who used the language of Islam to argue that Pakistani troops were apostates defending an infidel state and therefore deserved to be killed.
An hour’s drive away Khair Muhammad, a 29-year-old man with a long wispy beard, recalls a time when he too agreed with what the Taliban preached. Khair is a student at Rastoon, a similar project to Sabaoon but aimed at males over the age of 17. “I became involved with the Taliban after my brother joined,” he says. “People in Swat were easy victims. Most are illiterate, and the Taliban exploited that in the name of religion. Looking back, I realise I was confused.” Khair plans to complete a degree in religious studies and become a teacher.
Another student, a teenager who did not join the Taliban but made clothing for them, says he wants to join the merchant navy. The men, all of whom had been detained but whose cases were later judged not to merit going to trial, take literacy classes and undergo training in agriculture, carpentry and technical skills to prepare them for their new lives.
“Religious deradicalisation is the main focus,” says Lt Col Ayman Bilal, who oversees the school. “One glaring factor in the cases we have dealt with was how much the Koran was being misquoted by the militants. They were adding words to it, and taking words from it. Because people could not read themselves, they just accepted what they were told by the Taliban.”
Posters dotted around the complex remind students that suicide bombing is haram, or religiously forbidden; that Muslims cannot mount an aggression against their own state; and that foreigners and people of other faiths should be respected.
Rastoon, which opened last year, ironically in what was once a derelict facility used by the Taliban, currently caters for 95 students. Most are under 35, and were labourers, farmers and students before they were drawn into the militants’ orbit. Soon the first group deemed ready to go back to their families will be released from the high-security compound. They will be monitored for a year, with a relative acting as a guarantor. “It will be a test for us, but I am confident they will be ready to contribute to society,” says Lt Col Bilal. “You have to go beyond army operations to address the problem [of militancy] in the long term. This programme helps fill that gap.”
Staff at Sabaoon and Rastoon acknowledge that the numbers involved amount to a drop in the ocean when it comes to Pakistan’s battle with militancy. “I have these children, but there are at least another 5,000 out there,” admits Dr Peracha. “However, it’s a start, and I hope to see more like it – not just rehabilitation centres but prevention centres making sure that children who have fallen out of the mainstream, or who cannot afford to go to school, are helped before they are picked up by the miscreants.”
Last year Dr Farooq Khan, a scholar of Islam who was in charge of religious instruction at Sabaoon, talked of extending the model further, even to hardened militants in Pakistan’s jails. “We can’t hang or kill them all. It is imperative that this experiment is replicated with them, and what I am teaching them must be shown on the media, on television and everywhere.” Months later, Dr Farooq, an outspoken critic of the Taliban, was assassinated. For his colleagues at Sabaoon, it was a chilling reminder of the dangers of their work.
“I know my life is at risk,” says Dr Peracha. “But these children need help, and there is no doubt in my mind that this is an incredibly important project, not just for Swat but for Pakistan in general. It is perhaps the most critical work that I will ever do in my life.”
Cash for Kalashnikovs? A radical approach
When Pakistani officials began planning a deradicalisation programme in Swat they looked at how other conflict-affected countries had approached the challenge of rehabilitating and reintegrating militants. The cases examined included those in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Sri Lanka and Singapore, says Maj Gen Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmad. “What we learned from these other projects we then shaped to fit the Pakistani context.”
Of all the rehabilitation programmes, the Saudi “carrot and stick” model is perhaps the best known. Participants undergo six weeks of counselling, religious re-education, job training and art therapy. Financial incentives are a key, and somewhat controversial, element.
To ease their transition to the outside world, the former militants are helped to find a job, a car and a place to live. Many have their weddings paid for and receive a monthly stipend. If the men have financial means plus work and family obligations, the thinking goes, they are less likely to drift back to militancy.
The Saudi focus on persuasion and rehabilitation has been held up as a model for other countries struggling with extremism, but few other governments could afford it. The Saudi approach has not been a complete success: of the hundreds who have passed through the programme since 2004, some have fallen back into militancy and at least nine have been arrested after rejoining terrorist networks.