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Will they grow up to be militants?
BRANDISHING toy guns, dummy rocket launchers and with staves in hand, over 100 hooded children, between five and 12 years, marched in the main bazaar of the Barikot tehsil in Swat shouting full-throated slogans of ‘Long live Tehrik-i-Taliban Swat’.
The children’s protests were aimed at a security barrier that had been set up on the road linking the district’s main town of Mingora to a nearby village. Hundreds of people went past indifferently, but as a visitor I was taken aback. I had never seen such a protest in the valley before.
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Today children in the NWFP and Fata are under the spell of increasing Talibanisation — which is a frightening sign that the country’s northwest has already been lost to militancy and extremism. This is an incalculable price no nation can afford to pay as it turns itself into a front-line state in a war which many perceive as being fought less for a just cause and more for the monetary remuneration it brings.In Swat, children have gone through tremendous suffering during the last two years of bloodshed. With their young minds gripped by the rhetoric of terror-spewing clerics and their schools serving as the security forces’ bunkers, children have been left to count the sorties of gunship helicopters.
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Dislocated youth qualify more readily than other segments of society. The last four years of confrontation in the NWFP and Fata have seen major disruptions in normal routines. Militancy and military operations have dented the social order and caused distrust of the state and its institutions. No surprise that this chaos has caused subversive elements to successfully indoctrinate youth who have lost their sense of direction. Thus, in militancy-hit areas youngsters between 12 and 18 years of age are the most vulnerable group to fall into the Taliban’s subversive net.
Over 5,000 boys as young as 7, have been already trained by the Taliban to target military and others in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with many more still in training, according The Pakistan Daily Times.






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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (6)
at 16:32 on May 4th, 2009
Toy guns should be outlawed, and so should real guns
Rev. Jermano
at 22:49 on May 5th, 2009
This is not about toy guns, jermano. This is about the schools where they only teach the Koran, and their brand of Islam. This is about how the Taliban and other terrorists have reduced the options of these children until the only relief they have is to join them.
There are reports that for years, children have been chained up in madrassas, forcing them to memorize the Koran in a language they don't even understand.
at 02:10 on May 7th, 2009
Well Rene if there was not an out of control US military that sends drones and missiles throughout their country killing innocent people....then certainly Jihad would not be insisted as it is today... You mean to tell me in the US we are not forced to support the miltiary complex? We are forced whether we pay taxes or not....As they crash the economy and wreck the banks...with their lies about terrorists in other countries. Keep on beating your propaganda Rene.....you are dead wrong.
http://my.nowpublic.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan-taliban-seek-north-vietnam-military-advisors.....
Rev. Jermano
at 06:53 on May 6th, 2009
Inquilaaaaaab Jihadabaaaad..!
It is a nice fate of such stories that everyone conveniently choose to ingore them. Nobody wants to read them and ouch.., commenting would be eternal sin.
It is always nice to know that by ignoring problems the just vanish in the thin air..puff..!
We can sit tight like this till it explodes just under our revered rear.
.Agent.
at 07:40 on May 6th, 2009
Source: news.faithfreedom.org
Since all these students are taught is only the Koran in a language they don't understand, they have no skills to make a living with, except to be a street sweeper, garbage collector or suicide bomber.
Source: news.faithfreedom.org
at 02:23 on May 7th, 2009
Sure Rene go on with your ramblings....because tell me what significant outcome has come from your modern world? You have massive unemployment, failed banks, and under control by an insane US military complex. Americans don't know math, or there would not be such greedy people, who lie and steal as they do in the USA. Come on Rene tell us about all the prison expansionism in the US, because the US is nothing but one crime scene after another.
So you want to make changes to introduce yourself a different people, by calling them backward militants that need to be killed, in order to bring your failed trash society into their lives? Makes a lot of sense Rene... They don't have to face the pornography, the whores, the drug gangs, the rampant gun culture, the wrecking of the environment by big business that percolates around the US military machine.
How about being nice to people, when they spit on you?, How about doing what Jesus said...turn the other cheek....and see how to make a friend. How about getting out of your little insane US world and go into the world and do some good.
I do it each and every day.... I am a real American.....working to make friends and promoting Nonviolence. I stick up for the poor, not by beating them into dirt dug ditches, and killing their families. Of course they become Jihad, because what you do to them.
You need to see the real world Rene....and do something positive.
Rev. Jermano