Taliban campaign targets girls' schools

[Batgirl]

By Massoud Ansari in Dara Adamkhel and Gethin Chamberlain
Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:01am GMT 04/02/2007

The notice pinned to the board outside the Mohammed Hussain Maila girls' school in Dara Adamkhel was uncompromising: "We have decided to bomb the school building. If any of the students shows up and dies as a result, she will be responsible for her own death."

It was a warning the young pupils at the school in Pakistan's North-West Frontier knew should be taken seriously. Four other schools in the lawless tribal region area had already been bombed. Within a matter of days, half of the 506 pupils at the school had been withdrawn.


Parents of young girls are fearful to send them to class

Across the border in Afghanistan, the Taliban's antipathy towards the education of girls is well-documented, and has led to the murders of at least 61 teachers in the past 18 months and the razing of 183 schools. But now hard-line Islamists in Pakistan - known as local Taliban - have launched their own campaign against girls' schools, claiming the pupils are being "westernised".

Parents have been warned to keep their daughters home and drivers who transport pupils to schools have been threatened with dire consequences unless they desist.

"We always wanted our daughter to acquire education, but we are scared," said Baaz Khan, a businessman, who took his 11-year-old daughter from the school.

"It is really awful not to educate our daughters, who have the challenges of the modern world ahead of them, but for me and my friends, the very thought of having to carry the dead bodies of our young daughters out of the wreckage of a bombed school is equally unnerving."

advertisementLateef Afridi, a former member of the national assembly, said that with only 1 per cent of the women in the frontier region receiving an education, the future was gloomy.

"If the situation prevails and people are forced to keep their daughters uneducated, the future is certainly bleak and we are all doomed," he said.

Other schools in Dara Adamkhel, a town of 100,000 people about 40 miles south of Peshawar, have suffered the same fate and some are contemplating closure.

People in the town say militants have taken a cue from Waziristan, the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, where most of the girls' schools - including 180 community schools for girls set up with the assistance of the Norwegian government - have been closed.

There has also been an increase in militant activity in the past year. Barbers have been told not to shave off beards, music and video shops selling Hollywood and Bollywood movies have been bombed, and slogans have appeared on walls urging support for the militants. "Martyrdom is a shortcut to heaven!" one reads. "Rise! Rise, you who yearn for heaven," says another.

The campaign is frustrating attempts by the Pakistan government to win over the population of the tribal areas. "They are going back to the dark ages," said one senior American diplomat in Islamabad. "Schools are being built in the tribal areas but they kill the teachers and assassinate tribal leaders and people who criticise them."

The diplomat said the government of Pakistan was struggling to maintain order. "There is a big contest for the hearts and minds of the local people," the diplomat said. "Give the government credit - it is trying to bring back law and order by empowering the tribal leaders, but Pakistan law is not in effect in the tribal areas."

In November, two people were killed as they tried to plant a bomb at a girls' school in Sheraki, but three other school buildings in Pirwal, Sunikhel and in Haji Noor Ali Kili were all badly damaged in attacks. At least eight people were injured when a bomb exploded at the al-Noor school during a workshop on health awareness run by the UK-based charity, Response International.

Notices have also been posted around the town warning people not to co-operate with international organisations, including the World Bank and the Red Cross.

A decree issued last week by Mufti Khalid Shah, a religious leader, said: "All these NGOs are working on the agenda of Zionists; it is a duty of every Muslim to destroy their offices, attack their vehicles and to kill its members."

He added: "It is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction against these -infidels."

The Pashtun tribes of the area are traditionally independent-minded and many disagree with the edicts. But there is widespread fear about the threat posed by the militants, who appear highly organised and resourceful.

"We have got squads of fedayeen [suicide bombers] and if anyone tries to harm any of our members, these fedayeen would attack them from right, left and centre," one warning notice read.

Far from standing up to the militants, officials in the town appear to be toeing their line, ordering female teachers and students of government schools to wear the cover-all white burqa on their way to and from schools.

At a meeting with headmasters of the girls' schools last week, Kohat Abdul Ghafoor, a political official, said that the female teachers should replace their "fashionable black" burqa which does not cover the full face with the traditional white burqa.

Human rights activists have criticised the local authorities. "This approach of the political administration to the problem is quite amazing, showing their helplessness in which the female school teachers and students, even those as young as eight-years-old, are being threatened if they do not wear the burqa," said Imran Khan, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Telegraph