Skinder Bashir
An individual is said to be the youngest and most energetic when 15 to 30 years of age. This period is a natural gauge to declare the youthfulness of an individual. But, the question is how to gauge whether a country is currently young or old? The scale set to pronounce a country young or old is the percentage of the population of its young people falling in the age group of 15 to 30 years.
A report published in the newspaper Dawn [Pakistan] says that 64pc of the population of Pakistan is below 30 years. It is one of the youngest countries in the world and the second youngest in the south Asian region after Afghanistan. A self-evident fact or a well-known truth is that any individual has the most brilliant prospects to physically and mentally grow up to the age of 30 years. They will have brighter chances to excel in any domain of life. It is most appropriate to say that the period of age up to 30 is the cultivable era of the age
Pakistan, while having 64pc of the population below the age of 30 years, not only makes Pakistan the youngest country but also the most fortunate country to have the young and most vigorous human resource in the world. But the ugliest face and the most unfortunate side of the country, Pakistan, is that despite educating its youth in science, technology and human ethics, it sends them to the madrassas devoted to radicalization and religious fanaticism. These madrassas, thirty-thousand (30,000) in number, promote nothing but extremism in the name of religion, Islam. These madrassas are well-equipped centres of indoctrination where terrorists and suicide bombers are fostered and engendered.
While speaking at the Human Development Index of different regions of Pakistan, Dr Adil Najam, dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, said that only 14 out of 195 countries spend lesser than Pakistan on education. Dr Adil Najam’s unambiguous statement reflects. how oblivious the State of Pakistan is toward the scientific education of the youth. Such an extremely dangerous inadvertence has given a vast space for religious fanatics to open their indoctrination centers.
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Since the state of Pakistan is failing to bring forth the state-sponsored educational network that would reach the grass-root level of the society, and would eventually close the doors of these indoctrination centres. Therefore, the outcome of this failure is paving a way for terrorism and fertilizing the soil of Pakistan for fanatic indoctrination. Aljazeera has published an appalling instance of such fanatic indoctrination of a suicide bomber, Umar Fidai, a 15-year-old boy. He says, “Three policemen were standing close by, and I thought if I killed them too, I would still make it to heaven…At the time I detonated (explosive vest had failed) myself, thoughts of my family were not in my mind, I was only thinking about what the Taliban had told me.”
In the same paper, it is also read that Umar Fidai is only one of the hundreds of other children. It is believed that the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) have brainwashed and utilized suicide bombers in their ongoing war with the state. Most are impressionable children from poor families who are indoctrinated through networks of religious schools which provide the only hope of advancement in isolated regions poorly served by the Pakistan government…A significant majority of suicide bombers in Pakistan are believed to be between the ages of 12 and 18, with some studies putting the number near 90pc…Pakistani Taliban Commander QariHussain has boasted that his organization recruits children as young as five years old for suicide attacks, saying that, “ children are tools to achieve God’s will.”
There are around twenty-five lakh students in around thirty thousand madrassas in Pakistan. Urdu News Pakistan on its 29th April 2019 update reveals while quoting Major Gen. Gafoor that there were only 247 madrassas in 1947. The number increased to 2016 in 1980, and now the number is shockingly 30000 (Thirty Thousand). It is said that there are around thirty lakh students being fanaticized in these madrassas. Dawn, the famous newspaper of Pakistan, has published a report prepared by Pak Alliance for Math and Science under the title of “The Missing Third). The report was published on 14th Sep. 2021. The report says, “there are more than 2 (two) crore children between 5 to 16 of age in Pakistan who don’t go school. This number makes 23pc of the population of children in the country”. This is that naive, innocent, and unfortunate lot of the country being grasped by the fanatic hawks for their terroristic missions. They are taken to indoctrination centres they call madrassas and are shaped as per their fanatic curriculum.
