Children of war long to return to classrooms

Santi W.E. Soekanto, Contributor, Jakarta

He would blend well in any street of Jakarta, this young man whose long, straight hair is combed into a ponytail. In fact, he looks like a typical good-looking band player. In reality, he leads the "bomb squad" of the mujahidin force of North Maluku which for the past three years has been engaged in a deadly war against their former Christian neighbors.

"I was a student in Ternate when the unrest broke out," he said in the capital city of North Maluku."I went to the port, witnessing thousands upon thousands of refugees from my home island of Halmahera leaving the province. I learned from one of the refugees that my father and one of my stepbrothers had been killed by the enemy.

"What could I say? Allah has decreed death for my father and my brother. That's when I decided to go on jihad."

A group of young men barely out of their teens sit on chairs in a simple house in a corner of Ternate. That house is their headquarters, where they keep watch on the security situation and prepare for any eventualities such as raids of weapons or fresh unrest.

While young men of their age in Jakarta and other big cities hang out at shopping centers and cinemas, Ponytail and his friends polish their rifles and speak about war in an excited tone.

Jacky (not his real name) was not yet 18 when he became involved in the conflict. "I was in my second year at the local technical school when unrest broke out. I decided to assemble homemade rifles for the war," he said. "When some of my friends criticized me for that, I said: 'Do you want to wait until your house is burned down?' Actually, even our teachers approved of what I and my friends were doing, and allowed us to use the school labs to produce our weapons."

Ponytail wishes the conflict would continue indefinitely. "The longer the conflict is alive, the better. Otherwise, we will be out of work. This is my concern, apart from my wish to die as a martyr."

Ponytail's chief wish, however, is to go back to school. "I wish to go back to school ... I want to work, too. I still have five stepbrothers and sisters so I have to be able to look after them," he said.

A friend of his, Darul, said his only wish was to make his mother happy and proud of him. "My father has died. If I could, I would hire a maid so my mother wouldn't have to work too hard and get too tired." he said. However, he doubted that he would ever be able to afford a servant for his mother because he was merely a high school dropout.

In Central Sulawesi, a group of youths -- in late teens and early twenties -- sit huddled around a small pile of homemade weapons in a small house outside of Poso town. Five or so firearms that they assembled from scratch, using iron pipes that were burning hot to touch and metal springs that flattened after every shot during training.

The youths, many of whom have had to drop out of school after the conflict erupted in 2000, spend their time working and making new home-assembled weapons, reading and re-reading old magazines, and praying until there is a call to another "wedding party" -- that is, a combat.

Then, these local youths kiss their mothers' hands before leaving to join the group in the forests and ravines of Poso.

Joko (not his real name) was a "jihad leader" in Poso. If you came upon him in any street of Jakarta, one would not look twice, he was so ordinary looking. His small frame is wrapped in an old, faded, oversized shirt.

Uncombed, his brownish straight hair falls over his eyes. Sitting on the porch of a modest wooden house in Poso, Joko's smile is gentle.

He looks over a group of his men -- many are still about 15 years old -- including those who had been several days before captured together with him on their way home from a training in Ambon. Reluctantly, Joko recounts how no part of their bodies was spared from the police investigators' beating.

"These pata pena (a local term for school dropouts) want everything to return to normal so they can return to school," he said. "They want to win the war, die as martyrs or go back to school."

Last November, Joko and one of his young men, who said he wanted to go back to school after the war as he was only 15 years old, died in one of the contacts with the Christian forces -- only weeks before the signing of the Malino peace deal in South Sulawesi.

Some 300,000 children in some 30 countries are fighting in armies and rebel movements, the UN estimates. There is no data on how many child combatants there are in Indonesia's hot spots such as the Maluku provinces, Central Sulawesi or Aceh, but they number in the thousands.

In areas where countless school buildings were razed to the ground, education was another "casualty of war." This is true not only for the child soldiers or child combatants -- the young people of less than 18 years of age who are conscripted or who volunteer to take part in the conflicts in any capacity in violation of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. No less victimized are child refugees who number around 70 percent of Indonesia's recorded 1.3 million refugees.

Rizal Jabab, Adhan Jabab and Azwan Jabab are three brothers in a family of refugees from Tobelo who for the past two years have been sheltering in Ternate. Their father died in a refugee camp shortly after escaping the bloodshed in their village. Their elder brother, Riswanto, 18, dropped out of junior high school and now has to work to help support the family by digging out sand in the local quarry. He earns up to Rp 200,000 a month but this is irregular.

Unicef Indonesia recorded that some 850,000 children across the country have never been to school, while around 1.2 million children have dropped out of school. This, however, is a much lower figure than the one provided by the government. Indra Djati Sidi, the director general of primary and secondary education, said in April 2001 that some 27 percent of school-age children between seven and 15 years, of a total of 33.5 million children, were unable to continue with their schooling for various reasons. The volatile province of Aceh has the highest dropout rate -- a situation attributed to poor security and the large number of refugees there.

The government has extended the deadline for the application of the compulsory nine-year basic education until 2008, according to Indra Djati Sidi, who said the government was trying to spread the responsibility of providing basic education to as many parties as possible, including parents and the community.

Indra said his office had cooperated with regional administrations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community forces to give junior high school lessons in 500 locations in remote areas across the country.

"This way, we don't have to build actual buildings. Just create learning activities," he said in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post. Children like Ponytail, Darul and others would benefit greatly if the scheme falls into place.