STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

This Frontline short documentary reported by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy examines the impact of the Taliban in Pakistan “out of the mouths of babes.” The narrative is highly engaging and is a searing indictment of the Taliban. The documentary makes an interesting statement on the battle against the Taliban: it is as much for the minds of the future citizenry of Pakistan as it is for square footage of land.

The swelling refugee camps of internally displaced people squeezed from their homes by US drone attacks, and faultlines between the Pakistan Army and the advancing Taliban are also examined. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre places the number of these refugees at upto 900,000 people, near half of whom may be children; out of their homes, and out of school.

“In Bajaur, just 10 miles from the Afghan border, flattened buildings are all that remain of this former trading hub, once home to 7,000 people.

The Army claims it destroyed the town because it was the only way to free it from militants. This hard line approach has left hundreds of thousands of refugees, many winding up in makeshift camps on the edge of the Tribal belt.

It’s the largest internal displacement Pakistan has ever seen, Obaid-Chinoy reports. Almost a million people have been forced to leave their homes.

Visiting one such camp in Peshawar, we meet two young men among the 15,000 children displaced there. Wasifullah and Abdurrahman are best friends, but they have different ideas of who is to blame for this war. Both boys fled their village when the Pakistani Army began bombing. Their district was also targeted by American missile strikes. In one of those strikes, Wasifullah’s 12-year-old cousin was killed.

“We brought his remains home in bags,” he explains with little expression. “We could only find his legs so we buried them in our village.”

There have been more than 30 U.S. missile strikes in the tribal areas in the last year. They target Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, but civilians are often killed as well. It’s an easy recruiting tool for the Taliban, and Wasifullah is eager to sign up.

But his best friend Abdurrahman blames Al Qaeda for the destruction of their village. He would prefer to become a captain in the Pakistan Army. The two friends sadly represent the fault lines in this unstable nation.”

The portrayal of the Taliban in this documentary is squarely two-dimensional, without a serious engagement of articulate voices inside the movement — only a man-child is interviewed in any detail. While access would understandably be difficult to obtain, it would have been interesting to know the spectrum of opinion spanned within the Taliban regarding issues like education and child recruitment. Still, well-worth half an hour of viewing.