Haqqani Network said to sexually abuse boys

http://centralasiaonline.com/

By Zahir Shah

Militant sexual abuse of the boys they recruit to join their cause apparently is rife in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the months after a Central Asia Online exposé about the Taliban's sexual assault of boys, Afghan and Pakistani officials have discovered instances of such abuses among other militant groups.

"I was dressed in women's clothes and was raped over four nights," Samiullah, a teen victim who was recruited by the Haqqani Network, said in a video statement posted last year on YouTube. "A friend of mine named Muhammad was also raped."

NDS evaluates Samiullah's case

Samiullah was 16 and had been working at a restaurant in Khost city, Afghanistan, when a man named Hamayun recruited him to join the Haqqani Network.

After going through training in Pakistan's tribal region, militants sent Samiullah on a mission to assassinate the governor of Khost Province, but security officials caught him before the suicide bombing was carried out.

During his interrogation, Samiullah detailed some of the tactics the militants used during training, the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) said. "Haqqani Network commanders are sexually abusing teenage boys who are being trained to carry out terror acts," the NDS statement said in a December statement.

NDS officials recently told Central Asia Online they take such allegations seriously, especially when a boy provides specific information.

Samiullah, for example, named Haqqani Network commanders Musa and Mohammad Kaleem, who are brothers, as two who raped him.

Long-term effects

Sexual assaults are a social issue that needs to be dealt with, psychiatric specialists said, because the ramifications can be far-reaching for society.

One concern is the spread of disease, but more worrying, psychiatrists said, is the lasting mental anguish that can destroy families and the social fabric.

"Children passing through the agony of abuse start hating males, even the male members of their family," psychiatrist Khalid Mufti said. "The trauma can even influence marital life later."

Sexual abuse can also lead to anger issues, he said, where the victims will view violence as the best way to solve problems.

And the reported cases likely represent only a fraction of the violations, psychiatrists assert.

Not a new practice

Samiullah's case is not an anomaly. Naematullah, a would-be suicide bomber arrested in Herat Province, told officials that he and many others were sexually abuses during militant training, according to an NDS statement.

And the allegations of sexual abuse are not new.

The Taliban in the 1990s were accused of sexually abusing boys, University of Peshawar professor Dr. Sarfaraz Ahmed said. "It's a deep-rooted phenomenon … [that has] always happened in the war that has been going on the Pak-Afghan tribal belt."

Indeed, the concept of such paedophilia is so commonplace it is colloquially called bacha bazi, or "boys for pleasure."

Militant abuses are condemned

But the idea that the problem has been going on for years – and sexual abuse of youth in general being such a long-standing issue – makes it no less condemnable, Ahmed said.

"It's the criminalisation of the society that the religious extremists were playing in the name of religion and also involved in such gruesome acts," Prof. Ijaz Khan of the International Relations Department, University of Peshawar, said in agreement.

Recently, though, a broad spectrum of society has been calling for justice.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has also urged that urgent steps be taken to stop the sexual abuse and slavery of young boys, according to Khamma press.

And activists in Pakistan are stressing that it is the state's responsibility to protect the children.

"It’s really a dangerous trend," former Awami National Party (ANP)-affiliated Pakistani parliamentarian Yasmin Zia said. "The Taliban or any warlord involved in such acts of inhumanity must be punished as abuse is a major sin and there are clear-cut punishments for its perpetrators."

"If we can't protect our children, then it's our failure," she said.