De klanstyrede områder i Pakistan har oplevet næsten et årti med væbnede konflikter. Det har fået titusinder til at flygte. Størstedelen af dem er børn, som er traumatiserede af de voldsomme oplevelser, advarer hjælpeorganisationer.
PESHAWAR, 16 June 2014 (IRIN): More than 60,000 people have fled North Waziristan Agency to safer parts of Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan as Pakistan’s military launches an offensive in the region.
Most of the people fleeing are children, and mental health experts are concerned that they will not have access to proper trauma care.
The Pakistani authorities have yet to set up camps to shelter the displaced, and what little mental health aid is available – usually at makeshift clinics in formal IDP camps – is out of reach for the North Waziristan children.
Psychiatrists treating residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the northwest are especially worried about the long-term effects of conflict on the children there.
In regions like North Waziristan Agency and Khyber Agency, children have been living with armed conflict for nearly a decade.
They have witnessed military operations, Taliban attacks and drone strikes, and the results of these.
Many children have grown up knowing only war, and the long-term effects of what they are experiencing worries mental health professionals.
New games, new behaviour
As an aeroplane takes off from Bacha Khan International Airport in Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, children living in a nearby camp for internally displaced persons rush to their shelters, shouting, “Jet! Jet!”
Habib Afridi, 37, told IRIN:
“Our children are still trying to escape from the memories at home.”
After a military offensive was launched in his native Khyber Agency, Afridi and fourteen family members moved to Peshawar to live with relatives.
“In Tirah [valley], in Khyber Agency, it was very normal that when a jet appeared in the skies it meant to bomb [the area], so for our children every flying machine making a loud noise means bomber jets.”
Lack of support
More than 43 percent of the population in FATA are under the age of 14, according to official figures, which means a large part of the population have grown up knowing war.
Children are often doubly affected by the conflict, says Sana Ijaz, who has worked with children in FATA through the Bacha Khan Trust Education Foundation, a local NGO.
Often they cannot turn to the adults in their household – usually their mother – for comfort and counselling, as many adults have themselves been traumatized by the war.
“Mothers are facing extreme forms of post-traumatic stress disorder,” Ijaz told IRIN.
“It includes their feeling of insecurity and loss in [the] conflict, [and] they are fostering these problems in their kids.”
The lack of support makes it even more difficult for children to understand the situations they see outside their homes.
In Datta Khel, a district west of Miran Shah, about 17km from the Afghan border and a popular corridor for insurgents travelling to Afghanistan, US drones have struck more than 50 times, killing hundreds of militants and civilians.
People call them “ghangay” – literally from the noise the drone engines make, which is locally heard as “ghang-ghang” but has evolved into ghangay.
Now, anything that sounds similar sends the children scrambling for cover.
Playing soldiers-and-Taliban
In the afternoons, children make their way out of mud-walled homes to gather on bare hills to play before the evening lesson at the local madrassa.
Here, cops-and-robbers is now soldiers-and-Taliban. Around 10 children divide into two groups, one acting as the military, the other as the Taliban. Most want to be in the Taliban.
Four children with sticks, pretending to be soldiers, try to find the Taliban, who fan out to hide.
The Taliban always outnumber the soldiers. They ambush the soldiers, and the children throw dust into the air to imitate explosions, and then capture the soldiers.
An “amir” (leader) – an older child – delivers a victory speech.
“O Infidels, beware! Whoever works for you will face the same consequences. These are traitors of Islam. They sold their honour for dollars. Death to them!”
The rest of children shout “God is Great!”.
When a kite appears in the sky the children rush to safety, shouting, “ghangay, ghangay!!”
The children pretending to be soldiers laugh and run with the rest.
One in three schools are closed
Many schools in FATA have been destroyed, so there is little to offer the children any distraction from the conflict.
The FATA Department of Education says more than 1,183 schools – a third of the total in the region – are closed because they have been damaged, or people fear being caught in the crossfire between the military and the Taliban.
In the schools that are still open there is often a shortage of teachers – in Bajaur Agency there is one teacher for every 74 students. Only 33 percent of children in the FATA attend school.
Inspired by videos produced by militants, children pretend to be suicide bombers or fighters. Their discussions revolve around the Taliban’s latest activities, their attacks and killings.
“Even my own children at home were always bringing [home] stories of Al-Qaeda, [the] local Taliban, drone strikes, and killings in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan,” Nasir Dawar, a journalist, told IRIN.
“I saw children running and taking shelter under beds whenever drones started hovering in the sky.” The behavioural changes in his children prompted Dawar to resettle his family in Peshawar.
Children overlooked
Læs resten af artiklen her: http://www.irinnews.org/report/100226/pakistan-s-traumatized-war-children-play-soldiers-and-taliban
