Poor boys in Swat Valley are making ready recruits for the Taliban,
which is using the specter of controversial U.S. drone strikes to bring
new members into its fold. CNN's Nic Robertson reports.
DRONE WARFARE BOOSTS TALIBAN
Swat Valley, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Sabaoon School for boys in northern Pakistan is anything but average.
Secret drone deal between Pakistan, U.S.
U.S. drone policy creating terrorists?
CIA no longer in control of drones?
CNN Explains: Drones
In Swat Valley, U.S. drone strikes radicalizing a new generation
April 15, 2013 -- Updated 0935 GMT (1735 HKT)
Taliban recruiting from drone warfare
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Sabaoon School in Pakistan's Swat Valley works to de-radicalize local youth
- U.N. Special Rapporteur: U.S. drone strikes here have radicalized a new generation
- Up to 3,500 people have been killed in Pakistan by U.S. drone strikes since 2004
- Between 18% and 23% of those killed were not militants, according to one report
Nestled amid the bucolic
charm of the Swat Valley's fertile terraced fields and steeply rising
crags it looks idyllic. But if you get up close, a harsher reality
becomes clear.
Two army check-posts
scrutinize visitors entering the sprawling site. Once inside, the high
razor wire-topped walls around the classroom compounds create a feeling
reminiscent of a prison.
The boys here, aged 8 to
18, were all militants at some point. Some are killers, some helped
build and plant improvised explosive devices, and others were destined
to be suicide bombers until they were captured or turned over to the
Pakistani army. All of them are at the school to be de-radicalized.
Ninety-nine percent of
the boys, I am told, have never heard of Osama bin Laden, despite the
fact he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in the next valley over from here.
What has radicalized these boys instead, the school's director says, is
what turns teenagers the world over to crime: poverty, poor education,
limited prospects and often lack of parental control.
Secret drone deal between Pakistan, U.S.
U.S. drone policy creating terrorists?
CIA no longer in control of drones?
CNN Explains: Drones
It is in this setting
that the boys have made ready recruits for Taliban scouts who wean them
on tales of the U.S. drone strikes that have killed scores of Pakistani
women and children over the past few years.
The walls of the school, I
learn, are not so much to keep the boys in, but to keep the local
Taliban out. A few years ago they held sway in the Swat Valley, and
while the army has since reclaimed control, the militants remain a
threat -- particularly for the teachers.
The boys here are being
schooled in basic math and literature. Drama and sports are also
encouraged, as is art. Physiologists evaluate the boys and offer
council, and a religious scholar is attempting to draw them away from
extremist ideology and back towards mainstream Islam.
For Pakistan it is a new approach to radicalism that has been forged out of necessity.
The director tells me
the need for more resources in Swat is huge. Just a few days before our
visit, a dozen more child militants were arrested by Pakistani
officials.
The U.N. Special
Rapporteur on drones, British lawyer Ben Emmerson, recently visited
Pakistan and told me: "The consequence of drone strikes has been to
radicalize an entirely new generation."
In early March he spent
close to a week in Pakistan meeting government officials and tribal
leaders, some of who claim to have lost family members in strikes. Since
2003 there have been more than 350 drone strikes in Pakistan, but no
one has a reliable figure for precisely how many have been killed.
The New America
Foundation estimates that in Pakistan, drones have killed between 1,953
and 3,279 people since 2004 -- and that between 18% and 23% of them were
not militants. The nonmilitant casualty rate was down to about 10% in
2012, the group says.
A study by the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism estimates that since 2004, Pakistan has had
365 drone strikes that have killed between 2,536 and 3,577 people --
including 411 to 884 civilians.
U.S. President Barack
Obama has maintained the strikes are necessary for defeating al Qaeda
and the Taliban, but others including Emmerson have their doubts.
He said: "Through the
use of drones you may win the immediate battle you are waging against
this particular faction or that particular faction ... but you are
losing the war in the longer term."
Emmerson's legal
insights will form the basis of his report to the U.N., expected later
this year. For the United States, at least, it could make for a damning
read.
Emmerson says the drone
strikes are illegal under international law as they violate Pakistan's
sovereignty and fly in the face of Pakistani government calls for them
to desist -- and that they also legalize al Qaeda's fight against
America.
He said: "If it is
lawful for the U.S. to drone al Qaeda associates whereever they find
them, then it is also lawful for al Qaeda to target U.S. military or
infrastructure where ever (militants) find them."
Until now the U.S. has
used its own lawyers to give legitimacy to the covert war being waged by
drones. Now Emmerson believes it is time to challenge them.
"There is a real risk
that by promulgating the analysis that is currently being developed and
relied up by the United States they legitimize, in international law, al
Qaeda, by turning it in to an armed belligerent involved in a war and
that makes the use of force by al Qaeda and its associates lawful," he
told me.
The boys of Sabaoon School are at the sharp end of the drone debate and are living with its consequences.
And in the relative safety of these classrooms, there's little doubt change is long overdue.
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