Taliban Suspected Of Burning Down Schools In Pakistan

by Zofeen Ebrahim

(IPS) KARACHI -- Arsonists have struck nine schools in the remote hills of northern Pakistan, sparking official concern that Taliban or other Islamist groups critical of organizations that get foreign aid could be targeting the area.

However, local observers said the attacks highlighted a need to establish better ties between foreign aid groups and community members in the deeply religious and socially conservative region.

On just one night, Feb. 15, unidentified attackers razed seven girls' community schools with dynamite in the Sunni Muslim-dominated area of Daril Tangir, 250 kilometres south of Gilgit, in the Northern Areas. Four days later two other schools, one of them for boys, were damaged in arson attacks in Chilas, about 120 kilometres south of Gilgit.

No students died or were injured in the attacks but in all, 500 pupils have had their schooling halted by the destruction of the modest two- and three-room schools.

The government, in statements, said the attacks seemed to have been planned and took place in an area suspected to be under Taliban influence. Two of 23 suspects taken into custody have been found to have connections to Islamist groups inclined to holy war.

The attacks came shortly after President Gen Pervez Musharraf called on religious leaders to help rein in extremism, and just before the holy month of Muharram.

Religious leaders and other members of the local assembly have condemned the attacks as terrorism and said non-locals were to blame. They also have asked the government to provide security for the region's remaining schools.

Local observers said the schools likely were targeted because they received funding from foreign aid groups. The region has seen similar attacks in the past. In July, two unknown attackers hurled hand grenades at the offices of International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD). A watchman was injured in the attack, the seventh such incident in recent years.

''All these schools established by the government under the Social Action Program were funded by the World Bank. It is quite likely that that could very well be the reason,'' said Mir Aman, resident editor of 'The Kunjarab Times International', a Gilgit newspaper.

As the schools began to attract students, he added, ''enrollment in madrasah seminaries started declining and the fundamentalists took that as a threat to their value system."

''The people in this backward area are very religious and female education is considered a waste,'' Mir Aman said, adding he feared that those who had started sending their children, and especially daughters, to schools now would be apprehensive for their safety.

''In such an environment, the parents are bound to be scared,'' he said. ''People want to send their daughters to school but the local government should provide safety and an assurance that such unfortunate incidents will never happen again."

Sadat Ali Mujahid, a journalist who visited the damaged schools and found that contrary to what was widely believed, they had been co-educational and not strictly segregated by sex, said locals appeared to take the attacks in stride.

''I spoke to some parents and they said if the incident had occurred in the daytime and if the children had been injured, that would've definitely scared them,'' Mujahid said. ''The local people are quite used to grenade attacks and scuffles."

The Northern Areas, a mountainous landscape of breathtaking beauty, is among Pakistan's least developed regions. A majority of its 1.5 million people live in abject poverty and only 12 percent can read and write. Most residents also are said to believe that sending their children to school is un-Islamic and that to educate their daughters would be to corrupt their minds. In a largely sexually segregated society, it does not help that many schoolteachers are male.

Even so, demand for education exists and the destruction of the nine schools will have a devastating effect, said Mujahid.

The government built the schools but with no more funding for its education project, will be unable to repair them, he said.

''As for the community, it is too poor to pitch in either. For the teachers, financially supported by the community, no school means they lose out on their livelihood,'' he added.

Mir Aman said more must be done to win support for schooling from influential locals including imams at mosques, teachers at local madrasah, and members of local councils.

In addition, many residents remained to be persuaded that foreign aid groups and non-governmental organizations were working in local interests and need not be regarded with suspicion, he added.