PAKISTAN: Girls' Schools Face Growing Threat in NWFP
© Kamila Hyat/IRIN
A school near Peshawar where increasingly more and more girls
are under threat from pro-Taliban
militants |
DARRA ADAM KHEL, 20 Dec 2006 (IRIN) - It is not uncommon to
hear the sound of gunfire in the small town of Darra Adam Khel, 42 miles south
of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Pakistan's rugged North West Frontier
Province (NWFP).
In fact, a deafening volley sounds out every few minutes
in the town's dusty main bazaars, as traders or buyers test out the weapons on
sale at the many shops lined along the market.
Darra Adam Khel, for over
a century, has been the centre of locally manufactured arms and replicas of
almost every conceivable weapon, from pistols and hand grenades to automatic
machine guns, carved out with astonishing skill at the small iron forges visible
everywhere.
It is estimated that at least 10,000 people from among the
population of around 80,000 earn their living from the weapons trade – which
flourishes despite government bans on displaying weapons in public.
"Our
grandfathers and great grandfathers made swords and sabers. We make guns,"
explained Azam Khan, 40, a trader, as he carefully tested the weight and balance
of a newly turned out Kalashnikov gun.
But recently, the weapons of
Darra Adam Khel, located in a tribal area where the writ of Pakistan’s
government is limited, have been turned inwards. The targets have been schools
for girls, and today many girls in the area no longer go to school.
"We
want her to be educated. It is important these days, but we are too scared to
send her," says Azmat Khan, as his daughter, Faria, aged nine, helps her mother
knead dough for rotis (bread). She has not been to school for two
weeks.
"It is too dangerous now, and my friends and I are scared," Faria
told IRIN.
Over the past two months, at least two schools in the area
have been bombed. They include the Government Girls’ High School at Akharwal in
Darra Adam Khel, which suffered damage after a bomb attack at the end of
November and the under-construction Girls’ Degree College Sheraki, whose
boundary wall was damaged in another bomb attack.
|
Getting
girls into the classroom is already a challenge throughout much of
NWFP
|
"There have also been notices
affixed on the gates of schools, asking people to stay away. The situation is
very bad," a spokesperson for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
said at the organisation's Peshawar office.
Parents of pupils, teachers,
school heads and bus drivers bringing pupils to schools have also been
threatened and warned to stay away. In other cases, militant extremists have
made phone calls to schools, ordering that girl students wear the 'burqa' (a
full veil covering the body from head to foot).
The targeting of schools
for girls is not limited to Darra Adam Khel. In October, an aerial attack
carried out by the Pakistani military in Bajaur Agency, reportedly killed at
least 80 pupils at a madarasa (religious school) following reports that the
leader of the madrassa, cleric Maulana Liaqat Ullah Hussain, was sheltering
Al-Qaeda militants. The attack has led to a marked rise in extremist sympathies
in the area, with the bombing widely condemned.
Recently, pamphlets
circulated in Bajaur have warned parents to keep girls away from school and
ordered schools to ensure children are dressed in shalwar kameez rather than
'western' clothes including trousers and shirts.
The problem is a part
of growing 'Talibanisation' across the province, spurred on by the situation in
Afghanistan. There have been various reports of attacks on music or video shops,
threats to barbers not to shave men and warnings to female health workers and
teachers to leave specific areas across many parts of NWFP.
"We are too
scared to go back to our schools, even though we worry about the students who
will suffer because there are no classes to go to," said Surriya Bibi, 50, who
till recently taught at a private school in the Darra Adam Khel area.
There have been accusations that the coalition of religious parties
running NWFP’s provincial government - the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) - has
done too little to combat the problem. For its part, the MMA has consistently
stated it does not oppose education for girls and is in fact eager to encourage
it.
But the impact of the latest attacks has been extremely negative,
with no official attempt to provide security to women or girls who want to go to
school. This can only augur ill in a part of the world where the literacy rate
for women stands at around 10 percent on average; in many rural areas of NWFP it
is even lower because of a lack of sufficient schools, traditional reluctance to
educate girls and orthodox hostilities to allowing schools to operate.
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