Nexus between Extremism & Poverty
By Mohammad Jamil
May 18, 2013
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has been recruiting children to train them as suicide bombers; Baitullah Mehsud initiated suicide attacks by the children. His successor also used women and children in the terror acts because they appear to have run out of suicide bombers. They are sending untrained people who are either arrested by the police or who detonate their explosives before reaching their targets. On 19th November 2012, the TTP sent a woman suicide bomber to kill the former chief of Jama’at-e-Islamic (JI), Qazi Hussain Ahmed, in Mohmand Agency. However, she hesitated until his convoy had passed — blowing herself up and injuring five bystanders but missing him altogether. A would-be suicide bomber and his alleged handler surrendered on November 20 in Peshawar. Another would-be suicide bomber was killed in Dera Ismail Khan on November 23 before a Muharram procession. The question is why the TTP finds it convenient to enroll children for using them as suicide bombers?
Although Madrasas have done a great service by providing free education plus boarding and free meals to the poor students, but some of the organizers of these Madrasas have links with the banned organizations and indoctrinate the students to wage jihad against the infidels, disregarding Islam’s message of peace and love for the mankind. There have been numerous examples of Pakistani children and teenagers being recruited and exploited by terrorist groups in KP/FATA to become suicide bombers or help in terrorists’ attacks elsewhere in Pakistan. The phenomenon has been noticed when 11 children were arrested in Quetta, who were lured by United Baloch Army to plant bombs and trigger blasts against Security Forces and innocent civilians. The terrorist organizations view children as the most convenient workforce for terrorist activities, as it is very easy to influence their innocent minds. Terrorists exploit the innocent children and prepare them for exploding bombs in strongly-guarded areas, as they do not arouse suspicion and get easily merged with the local crowds.
The main targets of the extremists are children from poor families who are indoctrinated by promising financial assistance in this world and paradise in the next world. Other children due to their natural religious proclivity are motivated to wage Jihad. Children from broken families are more vulnerable to exploitation and become easy victims of terrorist indoctrination. Parents must guide their children how to avoid such terrorist manipulation. But at the same time, the government must create employment opportunities to provide jobs to the unemployed, healthcare to the sick and schooling for the children of impoverished sections of society.
In Pakistan, schooling is just an orphan, at once neglected and ignored. At best, it gets lip service; at worst, it gets a slice of idiotic populism. While schooling in private sector has plainly become a commercial proposition, the state-run system has run into intractable rot, requiring enormous effort to redeem. Extremism has many forms and manifestations. In a society afflicted with extreme poverty and extreme opulence, there is always a disaffected and discontent mass of people, disenchanted and disillusioned. Some of the unemployed youth and impoverished people can be lured by the criminals to ‘eke out’ living to keep their body and soul together, or are conditioned by the religious zealots, or are conditioned by the religious imposters or zealots to perpetrate acts of terrorism. Unfortunately, educating the citizenry has not been the pursuit of any government since our independence. The worst hit is the schooling, which in any educational pyramid makes up the base. In the 1990s, the crumbling public sector education system deteriorated further, as an unregulated growth of private sector education led to a system of education apartheid, sending the majority of the wretched of the earth to the perpetual ignorance and impoverishment. The poor had no choice but to send their kids to Madrasas because they could not afford to pay exorbitant private schools’ fees.
As the system caters to the educational needs of the nation’s huge children populace, mostly coming from poor and lower middle classes that are unable to afford expensive private schooling, it necessarily demands an urgent redemption. The government must give incentives to the poor people to send their children to government schools. In Bangladesh, government schools provide free meal and ration so that children do not join the labour force or get involved in criminal activities. Despite unprecedented increase in population, the ratio of students attending government primary schools declined. Surveys showed that the drop in enrolment ratio in government schools was due to substandard education, inadequate and untrained teachers and lack of other facilities. Therefore, a cost effective model was needed to raise the level of education across the massive schools network. It is an established fact that investment in human capital reduces poverty, and on the contrary illiteracy and ill health are obvious impediments to progress and prosperity in a competitive global economy.
Unfortunately, hundreds of girls and even boys schools were destroyed by the terrorists in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA. On May 10, 1933, German students had gathered in Berlin and other German cities to burn books with ‘un-German’ ideas. Books by Einstein, Thomas Mann, HG Wells, Sigmond Fried and others went up in flames as they offered Nazi-solute. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles delivered a speech stating: “You have done well to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past”. More than 100 years before that event, a German Poet and critic Heinrich Heine had said: “Where books are burnt, human beings are destined to be burnt too”. In Pakistan, not only books but schools were torched and destroyed, and of course human beings - suicide bombers and their victims. At this point in time when Islam is being demonized, Muslims are facing crises throughout the world; when terrorism is identified with Islam, it is imperative for the religious scholars and parties to persuade their followers to abandon the course of extremism. They should focus on seeking knowledge of science and technology, so that they can make their contribution in finding a respectable place in the comity of nations.
Mohammad Jamil is Lahore-based senior journalist.
Source: http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=207104
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/nexus-between-extremism-poverty/d/11662