WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - TALIBAN KILL HEAD OF
AFGHAN GIRLS' SCHOOL
Government officials say teacher had ignored death threats from hardline Islamists warning him not to teach girls.
An Afghan girl in
a classroom in
25 May 2011
- Taliban gunmen have killed the
headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored
warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said.
Khan Mohammad, the head of the Porak
girls' school in Logar province, was shot dead near his home on Tuesday, said
Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar governor.
"He was killed because he
wanted to run the school," Darwish said.
Mateen Jafar, the education
director in Logar, about an hour's drive from the capital,
Jafar said Mohammad's son was
wounded in the attack.
Education for women was banned by
the Taliban government from 1996 to2001 as un-Islamic. There are periodic
attacks against schoolgirls, their teachers and school buildings.
Women have won back some rights,
including education and the right to vote, since the Taliban were toppled after
the US-led invasion of late 2001.
The Afghan government and its
western backers have pledged to guarantee those advances, although the promise
seems precarious as Afghan leaders begin a reconciliation process that includes
talks with the Taliban.
Development agencies fear that western
governments are focusing too heavily on plans to complete a security handover
from foreign forces to Afghans by the end of 2014 without cementing gains for
women, such as education.
Girls have
returned to schools in recent years, particularly in Kabul, although such
rights are harder to enforce in the more remote and conservative areas of Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban women were
barred from access to healthcare and made to wear burqas covering them from
head to toe, and only boys were allowed to attend school. Many of those customs
are still widespread.
Girls have had acid thrown in
their faces by hardline Islamists while walking to school and schools have been
set on fire. Last year there was a spate of mysterious gas poisonings at girls'
schools, including some in Kabul, in which dozens of girls fell ill.
The Taliban have not made any
public comment on such attacks.
A report by aid groups in February
said girls' education was at risk because of poor security, lack of funds and
equipment and inadequate teacher training.
It said 2.4 million girls were
enrolled at school but about 20% of those did not attend classes regularly.
Those who did often faced obstacles such as open-air classrooms and journeys of
up to three hours.
The report noted a shortage of
female teachers – as few as one in every 100 educators in the most remote and
conservative areas – which limited girls' hopes of receiving anything more than
a primary education.
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