The Co-Optation of Trauma: A Generation of Child Soldiers in Pakistan’s War on Terror

I was 16 years old when the APS Massacre took place, my most vivid memory of that day is sitting in front of the television, still in my school uniform, watching with despair and then rage as news organizations reported the casualties and showed desperate parents looking for their children in hospital corridors and at the school gates. Research suggests that children respond to war and conflict in very direct and personalized ways, I remember sharing a post on Facebook celebrating the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty—almost gleeful that someone would pay for the fear I felt when going back to school. Several years later, as I came across that post again, I questioned what I had been celebrating. My response to the tragedy was not isolated, it was the standard response of thousands of children across Pakistan who listened as the state told them in press conference after press conference that the students killed in the attack were martyrs, child soldiers in Pakistan’s War on Terror. In this paper, I do a preliminary, self-ethnographic exploration of how the national discourse valorizing the APS victims as martyrs, and children’s education as part of the war effort, impacted students’ experiences of going to school in Pakistan and their understanding of their role in society.

Pakistan’s participation in the War on Terror has claimed 23,000 civilian lives between 2001 and 2018, yet there has been no acknowledgement of how this unnecessary loss of life was the result of an ill-thought-out policy decision. Instead, every loss of life has been purported as an essential sacrifice in the war effort, effectively deflecting all responsibility from the state for the high number of civilian casualties across the country for a war that has not even been fought within Pakistan. The state response to the APS massacre was particularly chilling in that such a grievous tragedy did not trigger a moment of introspection regarding policy shortfalls, but, instead, led to a national narrative which actively asked children to be part of the war effort by going to school in an environment where they were primary targets. 

Songs such as ‘Mujhe Dushman Kay Bachon Ko Parhana Hai’ and ‘Bara Dushman Bana Phirta Hai’ were released by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) which is the media and public relations wing of the Pakistan army. Sung from the perspective of children, the songs do not provide comfort by saying that such a tragedy will never happen again, rather, they give the message that children should prepare themselves for more, as they too, now, are fighting in the war. In the videos, it almost comes across as the parents sending their children off to war and not to school, in one video, a mother kisses her son’s forehead as he sings, “I have to go and seek revenge from him oh mother, I have to educate the children of the enemy”. Even as the second verse talks about educating the children of the enemy, we never found out what this meant in terms of policy changes or rehabilitative actions, instead, the National Action Plan formed in December 2014, just became an excuse to launch a ‘concerted national effort’ which further empowered the military and curbed all attempts at seeking accountability for the circumstances and security lapses which led to the attack, and the bleak security condition in the country as a whole. 

The lyric, “With my parents’ blood in my veins, I valiantly fought…”, again building on this false and outrageous narrative and expectation that children are supposed to be fighting against terrorists as bullets rain on them, while the state and army have proved incapable of even prosecuting those responsible for the attack and keeping someone like Ehsanullah Ehsan from escaping captivity. After the APS massacre, schools across the country were put on high alert, and their opening post the winter break delayed so that they could institute new and stricter security measures. During this time, on television and social media, children were repeatedly exposed to the devastatingly graphic images of the site of violence, as well as recreations of the attack through interviews with the survivors. While students at APS Peshawar and their families were given psychological assistance, no one ever really addressed how the massacre impacted a whole generation of children who went to school under almost wartime curfew conditions and in fear of being attacked.

The videos for both the songs I have mentioned above show children in school playgrounds, and assembly areas gathered in large groups, running around, and playing with smiles on their faces, however, the reality of schooling post the massacre was very different. In my own school in Karachi, we were given strict instructions not to stand in groups in open areas such as the playground, our morning assemblies and breaks were cancelled, and students were asked to remain within the school buildings. All the windows were covered up with brown paper, security cameras were installed everywhere, and barbed wire was mounted on to all the walls. At times, it almost felt like one was walking into military barracks rather than a school which suited the state’s narrative anyway. One of the more chilling things was the security drills that students were made to practice; every class had building maps put up on the walls, directing in which order and where they were supposed to go in case of an attack; one sounding of the alarm meant it was a terrorist attack and we were supposed to lock our classroom doors and windows and hunker down under our desks. My mother who taught primary school kids at the time was instructed to keep biscuit packs and spare water bottles in her classroom supply closet in case of an attack in which the children had to stay hidden for an indefinite period. In KPK, teachers were given gun training after which they could bring weapons to school because the provincial police force was not big enough to provide security to all educational institutes. 

In their research on children and terrorism, Garbarino et al., analyze how children cope with the on-going trauma of living with the threat and reality of violence, they note three important trends: 1) “the developmental effects of traumatic violence, 2) the role (and limits) of political ideology in giving meaning to physical suffering and injury, and 3) the allure of revenge and the precariousness of messages of compassion in situations of threat and insecurity.” Anecdotally, in discussions with friends, we recall how during this period our discussions in school centered on the escape routes we had planned in case of an attack, who we would save, would we run or would we stay and fight? Amidst all this, a friend’s mother recalled how she had been reluctant to go to school, finally asking her mother, “When people die in bomb blasts, do they feel the pain?” With these conversations the realization sets in that we belong to a generation of children in Pakistan who at one point or another believed that they would be either killed or injured in the process of getting an education. 

The state narrative and the political ideology under which it operated, did not help counter these feelings either, instead, it manipulated the trauma and rage of an entire nation to coerce frightened children into ‘bravely’ going to school while never guaranteeing their safety. Similar responses have been seen towards school shootings in the USA, where instead of amending the constitution and enforcing gun control, 14 states allow teachers to carry guns in school after a three-day training course. After a keyword search, it appears that no other victims of school shooting have ever been valorized as martyrs except for two victims of the Columbine Shooting in 1999, and this too was done by their families to fit a greater Christian Evangelical narrative. This just shows how peculiar the state’s idolization of these children as martyrs is, especially when even the victims’ parents have argued that they did not send their children to school to become martyrs. Child and adolescent Psychiatry professional, Dr. Lubna Bukhari argued that the sort of songs and tributes that had sprung up post the attack were in bad taste, adversely impacting the mental wellbeing of already traumatized children by feeding them narratives of revenge mixed in with messages of resilience and bravery. We see the impact of this in the life of schoolboy like Aitzaz Hasan who embraced martyrdom in 2015, after stopping a suicide bomber approaching his school. Aitzaz’s friends later shared that discussing what actions they would take to protect their community in case of a suicide attack was part of their everyday conversations. 

In her research, Ayesha Mian explores how trauma impacted the APS massacre victims and their families, she noted that, “…the impact of mass shootings extends far beyond the primary victims to encompass the community…” The trauma that children across the country experienced after the APS attack was co-opted by the state and used as a propaganda tool to redefine how we processed tragedy and viewed the role of children in society. Children were no longer innocent civilians attending school, but foot soldiers in Pakistan’s War on Terror, just another tool to further state/military objectives. There is a dearth of literature on the societal, educational and child developmental impacts of the APS massacre on not just the immediate victims, but also children across the country. It would be quite interesting to conduct further research into this to see how the national narratives and discourses on martyrdom, the War on Terror etc., impacted children’s experiences of schooling and their place in society post the APS massacre.