Author: Barry Bearak
Publication: Scotsman.com
Date: July 15, 2007
URL: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1103532007
With their teacher absent, 10 students were
allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first,
10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to
the winding dirt road.
A 13-year-old named Shukria was shot in the
arm and the back, and teetered into an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her
12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl's precious
breath and trying to help her stand. But Shukria was too heavy to lift and
the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.
As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more
studied aim at those they had already shot, finishing off Shukria with bullets
to her stomach and heart. Then the attackers seemed to succumb to the frenzy
they had begun, forsaking the motorbike and fleeing on foot in a panic, two
bobbing heads - one tucked into a helmet, the other swaddled by a handkerchief
- vanishing amid the earthen colour of the concealing wheat.
Six girls were shot here on the sunny afternoon
last month; two of them died.
The Qalai Sayedan School, considered among
the best in the central Afghan province of Logar, reopened only last weekend,
but even with Kalashnikov-toting guards at the gate only a quarter of the
1,600 students dared to return. Shootings, beheadings, burnings and bombings
are all tools of intimidation used by the Taliban and others to shut down
hundreds of schools. To take aim at education is to make war on the government.
Parents find themselves with terrible choices.
"It is better for my children to be alive
even if it means they must be illiterate," said Sayed Rasul, a father
who decided to keep his two daughters at home.
There has been some progress towards development
in Afghanistan, but most often the nation seems astride some pitiable rocking
horse, with each lurch forward inevitably reversed by the back-spring of harsh
reality.
The Ministry of Education claims that 6.2
million children are now enrolled - about half the school-aged population.
And while statistics in Afghanistan can be unreliable, there is no doubt that
attendance has multiplied far beyond that of any earlier era.
A third of the students are girls, a marvel
in itself. Historically, girls' education has been undervalued in Afghan culture.
Females were forbidden from school altogether during the Taliban rule.
But after 30 years of war, Afghanistan is
a country without normal times to reclaim; in so many ways, it must start
from scratch. The accelerating demand for education is mocked by the limited
supply. More than half the schools have no buildings, the ministry reports;
classes are commonly held in tents or beneath trees or in the brutal, sun-soaked
openness. Only 20% of the teachers are even minimally qualified. Texts are
outdated; hundreds of titles need to be written, millions of books need to
be printed.
And there is the violence. In the southern
provinces where the Taliban are most aggressively combating US and Nato troops,
education has virtually come to a halt in large swathes of the contested terrain.
In other areas, attacks against schools are sporadic, unpredictable and perplexing.
By the ministry's rough count, there have been 444 attacks since last August.
Some were simple thefts. Some were audacious murders.
"By attacking schools, the terrorists
want to turn the people against the government by showing that it has not
provided for security," said Haneef Atmar, the minister of education.
Atmar is the nation's fifth education minister
in five-and-a-half years, but only the first to command the solid enthusiasm
of international donors. He came to the job after a praiseworthy showing as
the minister of rural redevelopment and has laid out an ambitious five-year
plan for school construction, teacher training and a modernised curriculum.
He is also championing a parallel track of madrassas, or religious schools;
students would focus on Islamic studies, while also pursuing science, maths
and the arts.
To succeed, the minister must be a magnet
for foreign cash. And donors have not been unusually generous when it comes
to schools. Since the fall of the Taliban, the US Agency for International
Development has devoted only 5% of its Afghanistan budget to education, compared
with 30% for roads and 14% for power.
Virtually every Afghan school is a sketchbook
of extraordinary destitution. "I have 68 girls in this tent," said
Nafisa Wardak, a primary school teacher at the Deh Araban Qaragha School in
Kabul. "We're hot. The tent is full of flies. The wind blows sand and
rubbish everywhere. If a child gets sick, where can I send her?"
The nation's overwhelming need for walled
classrooms makes the murders in Qalai Sayedan all the more tragic.
The school welcomed boys and girls. It was
overcrowded, with the 1,600 students attending in two shifts, stuffed into
12 classrooms and a corridor.
But the building itself was exactly that -
two stories of concrete with a roof of galvanised steel. Two years ago, Qalai
Sayedan was named the top school in the province. Its principal, Bibi Gul,
was saluted for excellence and rewarded with a trip to America. But last month's
attack caused parents to wonder if the school's stalwart reputation had itself
become a source of provocation.
In the embassies of the West, and even within
the education ministry in Kabul, the Taliban are commonly discussed as a monolithic
adversary. But to the villagers near Qalai Sayedan, with the lives of their
children at risk, people see the government's enemies as a varied lot with
assorted grievances, assorted tribal connections and assorted masters. Has
someone at the school provided great offence, villagers ask. Is the school
believed to be un-Islamic? Many blame Bibi Gul, the principal.
"She should not have gone to America
without the consultation of the community," said Sayed Abdul Sami, the
uncle of Saadia, the other slain student. "And she went to America without
a mahram [a male relative], and this is considered improper in Islam."
Off the main highway, 330 feet up the winding
dirt road and through the blue metal gate, sits the school. It was built four
years ago by the German government.
On Monday, Bibi Gul greeted hundreds of children
as they fidgeted in the morning light: "Dear boys and brave girls, thank
you for coming. The enemy has done its evil deeds, but we will never allow
the doors of this school to close again."
These would be among her final moments as
their principal. She had already resigned. "My heart is crying,"
she said privately. "But I must leave because of everything that people
say. They say I received letters warning about the attacks. But that isn't
so. And people say I am a foreigner because I went to the United States without
a mahram. We were 12 people. I'm 42. I don't need to travel with a mahram."
Shukria, the slain 13-year-old, was a polite
girl who reverently studied the Koran. Saadia, the other murdered student,
was remarkable in that she was married and 25. She had refused to let age
discourage her from finishing an education interrupted by the Taliban years.
A new sign now sits atop the steel roof. The
Qalia Sayedan School has been renamed the Martyred Saadia School. Another
place will be called Martyred Shukria.
Life as a second class citizen
Although the power of the Taliban has been
greatly reduced in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion, slowly but
surely their influence, especially in the tribal south, is returning.
o In Badakshan, all women must get permission
from their husbands before being allowed to visit a doctor.
o Women teachers are regularly subjected to
beatings and assaults from roaming Taliban gangs.
o Mothers who send their children to school
are also targeted by the thugs, who try to intimidate them into keeping their
youngsters at home.
o Forced marriages and domestic violence feature
regularly in the lives of many women who live in the south and eastern provinces
of the country.
o Although more women are working in the media
now, they are under constant threat. Shaima Rezayee, a popular MTV-style presenter,
was shot dead after receiving death threats in 2006.