hist2004
06-05-2004, 10:33 PM
By Alessandra Stanley
Mohammad Anwar, 13, has fought in seven battles, and during the last one, an assault on a government garrison outside the village of Dara Noor, he killed at close range for the first time. He had followed the fighters through mined fields, running like crazy, and was in the first wave that captured the enemy post. He and a friend came upon three soldiers scrambling down a hill. His friend shot one. Mohammad Anwar shot the other two, thumping the bodies with his rifle butt to make sure they were dead, then calmly removing a revolver from the first corpse.
Asked what he thinks about killing, Mohammad Anwar looks puzzled. "I was happy because I killed them," he says. During the attack, Mohammad Anwar's older brother and some other mujahedin seized four soldiers. They bound the prisoners' hands, blindfolded them and marched them to Dara Noor. After the mullah arrived, they lined up the captives and shot them. Mohammad Anwar and his friend watched. How did he feel about that? He lifts an eyebrow and this time answers deliberately, as if talking to a slow-witted child. "I was happy," he says.
A goatherd's son, Mohammad Anwar has been fighting since he was ten. He has never been to school and insists that he is glad not to have to go. With his olive-brown eyes and brown curls peeping out from under his wool cap, he looks like any of the thousands of Afghan boys who loiter, energetic and restless, in Pakistani refugee camps. But there is something different about him. It is not in his face, which is babyish, or his hands, callused and blackened. It is the look behind his eyes, the dulled expression of a seasoned grunt.
In a jihad, or holy war, there are no age guidelines for combat. If a commander decides a boy is ready, then he fights. Fathers take their sons with them to the front. Orphaned boys go with their brothers or uncles. Mothers who demur are ignored. Forcing boys into battle is rare, since nearly all of them volunteer. It is what their ancestors have done for centuries, it is expected of them, and it is not to be questioned. "I was happy."
Islam Dara is a small mujahedin supply base nestled in jagged rocks beneath a circle of mountains, a desert oasis fed by a cold thin stream. Except for the sound of aerial bombing that burns red rings of brush fire above the enclave, Islam Dara seems sheltered. A few canvas tents are pitched amid boulders and mounds of ammunition: RPG-7s, launchers, bazookas. With its cool caves and grassy marshes harboring frogs, Islam Dara is a boy's paradise out of Kipling. But the dozen or so boys who stay there are living an idyll of war.
Sahin Shah, 10, a mujahedin with a pretty face and mountain flowers tucked into the brim of his cap, is offended by the notion that life in Islam Dara could be fun. His back stiffens, and he retorts with a frown, "We came here to fight. We don't want to play." As if to prove his point, he yanks the flowers from his cap and strips apart his Kalashnikov. When he cleans it, his — motions are slow, loving. Like most of the others, he comes from a small mountain village. His father was killed in combat two years earlier. He says he has been in a battle twice but isn't afraid of dying. He is fighting the jihad, and in jihad, there are no unhappy endings. "Either we kill them," he says, as if reciting a proverb, "or they martyr us."
The gaunt officer in charge, Mohammad Wali, 30, keeps an eye on which boys show promise for battle. Seven of the dozen are, to his eyes, ready for combat. The youngest is nine, the oldest 13, but Mohammad Wali is content with their abilities. "They are the same as the mujahedin -- better, because they are not afraid." Boys also have more energy than older fighters, but they still have to be watched. "Sometimes they behave like children," Mohammad Wali says, his eyes narrowing accusingly at Sahin Shah, "shooting at stones or teasing the mules." He too shrugs off questions about fear or death. In jihad, he says, "either we kill them, or they martyr us."
Jihad is learned at an early age, absorbed by children at home, in the mosque and, for those who can go, in school. There are not many schools in mujahedin-held Afghanistan, but the remaining few, called madrasas and run by mullahs, have a curriculum molded by war. "The madrasa used to be 80% ordinary subjects and 20% Islam," says a former Kabul schoolteacher now doing refugee work in Peshawar. "Today it is 80% about Islam." In the refugee camps in Pakistan, Afghan teachers instruct Afghan children, and the course material is almost entirely about jihad. In a dark, windowless classroom in the Nasserbagh refugee camp in Peshawar, 25 eighth-graders, heads shaven and obediently bowed, listen to their teacher. An algebra problem on a blackboard shows that Allah is one. History class is about Mohammad and Islam. So is geography. The teacher asks who is ready to fight. Every hand shoots up. Six-year-old Ahmad Zia, tiny but fierce in a black jacket and cap, rises from the floor and, with a pet student's earnest intensity, leads his classmates in a well-practiced chant: "I will not let the foreigner's foot into my country/ Either I will be martyred or I will kill him."
Regards,
Hist2004
Mohammad Anwar, 13, has fought in seven battles, and during the last one, an assault on a government garrison outside the village of Dara Noor, he killed at close range for the first time. He had followed the fighters through mined fields, running like crazy, and was in the first wave that captured the enemy post. He and a friend came upon three soldiers scrambling down a hill. His friend shot one. Mohammad Anwar shot the other two, thumping the bodies with his rifle butt to make sure they were dead, then calmly removing a revolver from the first corpse.
Asked what he thinks about killing, Mohammad Anwar looks puzzled. "I was happy because I killed them," he says. During the attack, Mohammad Anwar's older brother and some other mujahedin seized four soldiers. They bound the prisoners' hands, blindfolded them and marched them to Dara Noor. After the mullah arrived, they lined up the captives and shot them. Mohammad Anwar and his friend watched. How did he feel about that? He lifts an eyebrow and this time answers deliberately, as if talking to a slow-witted child. "I was happy," he says.
A goatherd's son, Mohammad Anwar has been fighting since he was ten. He has never been to school and insists that he is glad not to have to go. With his olive-brown eyes and brown curls peeping out from under his wool cap, he looks like any of the thousands of Afghan boys who loiter, energetic and restless, in Pakistani refugee camps. But there is something different about him. It is not in his face, which is babyish, or his hands, callused and blackened. It is the look behind his eyes, the dulled expression of a seasoned grunt.
In a jihad, or holy war, there are no age guidelines for combat. If a commander decides a boy is ready, then he fights. Fathers take their sons with them to the front. Orphaned boys go with their brothers or uncles. Mothers who demur are ignored. Forcing boys into battle is rare, since nearly all of them volunteer. It is what their ancestors have done for centuries, it is expected of them, and it is not to be questioned. "I was happy."
Islam Dara is a small mujahedin supply base nestled in jagged rocks beneath a circle of mountains, a desert oasis fed by a cold thin stream. Except for the sound of aerial bombing that burns red rings of brush fire above the enclave, Islam Dara seems sheltered. A few canvas tents are pitched amid boulders and mounds of ammunition: RPG-7s, launchers, bazookas. With its cool caves and grassy marshes harboring frogs, Islam Dara is a boy's paradise out of Kipling. But the dozen or so boys who stay there are living an idyll of war.
Sahin Shah, 10, a mujahedin with a pretty face and mountain flowers tucked into the brim of his cap, is offended by the notion that life in Islam Dara could be fun. His back stiffens, and he retorts with a frown, "We came here to fight. We don't want to play." As if to prove his point, he yanks the flowers from his cap and strips apart his Kalashnikov. When he cleans it, his — motions are slow, loving. Like most of the others, he comes from a small mountain village. His father was killed in combat two years earlier. He says he has been in a battle twice but isn't afraid of dying. He is fighting the jihad, and in jihad, there are no unhappy endings. "Either we kill them," he says, as if reciting a proverb, "or they martyr us."
The gaunt officer in charge, Mohammad Wali, 30, keeps an eye on which boys show promise for battle. Seven of the dozen are, to his eyes, ready for combat. The youngest is nine, the oldest 13, but Mohammad Wali is content with their abilities. "They are the same as the mujahedin -- better, because they are not afraid." Boys also have more energy than older fighters, but they still have to be watched. "Sometimes they behave like children," Mohammad Wali says, his eyes narrowing accusingly at Sahin Shah, "shooting at stones or teasing the mules." He too shrugs off questions about fear or death. In jihad, he says, "either we kill them, or they martyr us."
Jihad is learned at an early age, absorbed by children at home, in the mosque and, for those who can go, in school. There are not many schools in mujahedin-held Afghanistan, but the remaining few, called madrasas and run by mullahs, have a curriculum molded by war. "The madrasa used to be 80% ordinary subjects and 20% Islam," says a former Kabul schoolteacher now doing refugee work in Peshawar. "Today it is 80% about Islam." In the refugee camps in Pakistan, Afghan teachers instruct Afghan children, and the course material is almost entirely about jihad. In a dark, windowless classroom in the Nasserbagh refugee camp in Peshawar, 25 eighth-graders, heads shaven and obediently bowed, listen to their teacher. An algebra problem on a blackboard shows that Allah is one. History class is about Mohammad and Islam. So is geography. The teacher asks who is ready to fight. Every hand shoots up. Six-year-old Ahmad Zia, tiny but fierce in a black jacket and cap, rises from the floor and, with a pet student's earnest intensity, leads his classmates in a well-practiced chant: "I will not let the foreigner's foot into my country/ Either I will be martyred or I will kill him."
Regards,
Hist2004