Claim: A video shows a 7-year-old boy in FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa calling Pakistan’s government and security forces apostates and calling for jihad against them.
Fact: The claim is false. The young boy in the video is the son of slain Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) leader Mullah Fazlullah. The video is not recent either as it was released via TTP channels on 31 December 2014 after the group claimed responsibility for the Army Public School massacre in Peshawar.
On 21 July 2024, a blue verified account on X (formerly Twitter) known as War Analyst shared a video (archive) with the caption,
“A deeply disturbing video surfaced showing a 7-year-old child in FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, clad in bandoliers and armed with weapons, engaging in terrorist narrative vocalising. In the video, the child chants against Pakistan’s security forces, labelling them as “Murthad” (Apostate) and calls for jihad against them.
This is the worst form of child abuse. Instead of educating them, enlightening them with knowledge and competing with the world, these terrorists instigate them to mark the Pakistani security forces as an apostate force.
What a pity”.
The video shows a young boy delivering a message in Pashto. He can be seen wearing a turban, and his left hand is visibly wrapped around the barrel of a rifle.
When translated to English, the boy’s speech states, “Today we are at war with America, and Pakistan’s government and security forces are one of them”. He goes on to call the Pakistani security forces “apostates” who are “sacrificing themselves for the law of foreigners”, and calls for “jihad” against them. “The war will continue until it meets its end,” he adds at the end.
Violence in KP
On 22 June 2024, the federal government approved Operation Azm-i-Istehkam to eliminate extremism and terrorism. The announcement comes amid a dramatic surge in violent incidents, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), after the TTP ended the ceasefire in November 2022.
However, the opposition parties refused to support any military operation, demanding that the military leadership take the parliament into confidence first. Rallies and jirgas were held in various cities of KP to voice opposition against the new military operation.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search, using Google Lens, on the keyframes of the video. The result led to an article which included a screenshot of the video shared in the claim. Published by ABC News on 3 January 2015, and titled, “Taliban Uses Child to Justify Campaign of Violence”, the article states that the video was released by the Pakistan Taliban, and shows the purported child of a Taliban leader explaining their “campaign of violence”.
Screenshot of ABC News article
The video was released “just days after the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for a brutal attack on a Pakistani military-run school,” the publication added. The attack mentioned here refers to the 2014 Army Public School massacre in which 150 were killed, out of whom at least 134 were students.
The ABC News article identified the young boy in the video as the son of TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah. Citing the American intelligence group SITE, the article translated the boy’s message in the video as follows: “Today our battle is with the tyrants, which include the Pakistani government and its apostate army, I will clarify for you their reality, the Pakistan army is an American army and it has no zeal or morals. Those bastards, hypocrites, polytheists and agents of the Jews and the Christians, those thieves, highway robbers and drunkards… Our war will continue with them until the war meets its end”. The video was distributed then via the Twitter (now X) feed of a jihadi media group on 31 December 2014, the article added.
Iranian news website Farda News also shared the same screenshot of the viral video in an article on 3 January 2015. When translated into English, the article states, “After attacking a school in Peshawar last month, the Pakistani Taliban released a video of the ‘smallest enemy of the Pakistani government’ declaring war on the government. This video was published by Intel Group, which publishes most of the stories related to the Pakistani Taliban”.
Another Iranian-Persian website Mashregh News also posted a similar news story on the same day in 2015. Quoting the intel group, this article also confirmed that the young boy speaking in this video is the son of TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah.
Moreover, a post on X, by Pakistani journalist Iftikhar Firdous, also stated that the video is old and that the boy in the footage can be identified as the son of Mullah Fazlullah, the slain TTP Emir who was targeted in a drone strike in Afghanistan. Firdous added that the video was recently shared again on a WhatsApp channel affiliated with Hafiz Gul Bahadur (HGB). According to the ISPR, the recent terrorist attack at Bannu Cantonment was carried out by the HGB, which is an armed militant group formerly associated with the TTP.
Virality
The viral video received 42,000 views, 200 likes and 80 reposts at the time of publishing. It was also shared on X here.
Conclusion: The video of a young boy declaring war on the Pakistani government and security forces is not from FATA, KP. The video shows the son of the slain TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah and was released on TTP channels on 31 December 2014 after the group claimed responsibility for the APS massacre in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Additional Resource: Translation by Anisa Shabbir
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