Children of war long to return to classrooms

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.