In the Taliban’s school

School: a place for children to learn and grow? Not for the Taliban. In 2009, 500 suicide attacks were committed by children, the majority of whom had previously enrolled in schools designed to teach them to become military-trained kamikazes.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, founder of The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, followed several of these children at their “schools” to make the documentary Children of the Taliban. She breaks down the method for manipulating the children into five steps. The Taliban target poor and vulnerable families in rural areas. They separate children from their parents in exchange for a promise of compensation. Sons are sent to isolated, strictly controlled schools, from which escape is impossible. The families, without resources, have no means to find them.

The Taliban teaches the Koran in literary Arabic, a language which these children don’t understand— thus the children become intellectually dependent upon their teachers who are free to tell them whatever they wish. Newspapers, radios, televisions, and all other intellectual outlets are strictly forbidden. The Taliban encourage the children to hate the world in which they live. The children are also beaten and starved. The Taliban breeds discontent in these children in order to soothe their suffering with the promise of a future paradise – happy and wonderful – once the suicide attack has been committed. This is the final step in solidifying the children’s determination.

The children are then presented with propaganda films, spliced with images of dying civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. The message is clear: the West cares nothing for civilian victims, and suicide attacks are the only answer, the only way to glorify Islam.

Zenola, Sadik, and Messoud, along with many other children from the Talibanschools, gave themselves up to death in 2009, taking with them dozens of innocent civilians. A talk by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on this subject is available on TED talk: