After Taliban killed my little brother and my friends I wanted to join the army for revenge... now I try to turn kids away from extremism
Anger gnawed at every part of him as 14-year-old Ahmad Nawaz lay in a hospital bed in a strange country, his arm shattered and his heart broken.
Somehow, by hiding, by playing dead, he had survived a devastating Taliban terror attack on his school in Pakistan.
He had a badly damaged arm – but 149 of his friends and peers had been massacred, including his little brother and best friend Haris, 13, shot in the head as he tried to save a friend.
“There were 36 bomb blasts. I saw friends and teachers killed in front of my eyes. I wish I could have helped. I lay and watched. I couldn’t do anything. That I survived is a miracle,” he says.
But he didn’t know what to do with survival. Lying in Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital three months after the attack on Peshawar Army Public School in December 2014, 6,000 miles away from a life too dangerous to ever return to, tormented by horrific images, and without Haris, Ahmad had no idea how to face living.
Initially, he decided it would be by joining the army to fight the Taliban, wreaking retaliation and revenge.
But somehow, day by day, during the month and a half he lay in that bed, as the splintered bone in his upper left arm began to heal and the feeling in his decimated nerves began to return, he decided there was a better way to fight.
Not to battle hate with hate – to attack the terrorists themselves – but instead to fight their ideology.
He watched the UK news on the ward with horror and shock as it told of British teenagers joining terror groups here and abroad.
He decided he must convince them extremism was not the answer to their problems, by showing them, through telling his own story, how only innocent people suffer in its wake.
A year after the attack, Ahmad was still in pain, still mourning, but was standing in UK schools, speaking in a new language, and hoping to prevent children from turning to terrorism.
Soon he was working with the Home Office, encouraging communities to unite and fight extremism together.
And now, as his work continues, he has been nominated for a No2H8Crime Young Upstander Award for his courage and conviction.
Speaking with wisdom and poise beyond his years, the 17-year-old says: “I had a lot of time to think in hospital. I thought about those men in my school – ‘Why, why a school?’. And I realised they wanted to stop young people getting an education, so we could be more easily radicalised. I realised we had to focus less on going after them and more on stopping their ideology.
“I was shocked to learn of British children being indoctrinated. There are so many opportunities here, so why? I felt I must share my story.
“Initially, it was hard to keep talking about it and I am no orator. But I felt it was my responsibility, so no other family would suffer like us. I don’t want anyone else to lose a brother.”
He adds: “My family has been so welcomed here by people of all races and religions. We must work together and be united to fight hate.” Ahmad’s parents Mohammad and Samina spoke to the Mirror when the family first arrived in Birmingham in March 2015, for treatment to save Ahmad’s arm.
They spoke about what he had told them of that terrible day less than three months beforehand, when their world imploded. Ahmad was in a lecture when around 20 Taliban gunmen entered his school, their shots prompting the pupils to dive under tables and chairs.
The gunmen purposefully paced the floor shooting children dead. Somehow, they only hit Ahmad’s arm and assumed he had been killed.
Bravely, he then managed to flee to a changing room where others were hiding, but the men eventually found it. Again, he survived by playing dead saw sights he cannot erase.
“He has told us as he lay on the pretending to be dead, he saw the te ists throw chemicals on his teacher set her alight. She was crying, ‘save
“He watched her burn until she black like a coal,” Mohammad s adding that pupils and teachers