More attacks on girls’ schools

DAWN - Editorial

HELL-BENT on foisting their brand of religion on society, and reneging on a peace deal with the government, militants in Swat burnt down five more girls’ schools over the weekend. Over the past year alone, about 50 girls’ schools have been destroyed in Swat, and the trend shows no signs of abating. The actual figure for girls’ schools that are no longer functioning ever since the Taliban threat emerged has crossed 100 and keeps rising while the number of students affected is in the thousands. Militancy of this sort can be cited as one of the main reasons behind the growing crisis in women’s education in the NWFP. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey, the 10+ female literacy rate in 2006-07 was 28 per cent as opposed to 30 per cent the previous year.

With the burning down of a girls’ school in Quetta on Sunday, there are fears that this trend might be spreading. It is not clear who carried out this attack as no one claimed responsibility. But even if ordinary criminals, and not religious militants, were behind the Quetta attack, the incident has no less serious implications. It shows that there is no dearth of violent elements ready to target vulnerable sections of society and obstruct progress in crucial areas like education. After all, incidents like the large-scale destruction of girls’ schools in the north may give ordinary lawbreakers a chance to vent personal or ideological grievances by taking cover behind the march of religious militancy.

The response of the government to such incidents has ranged from lukewarm to indifferent. There has been no vociferous condemnation, much less action, to stop the perpetrators. The government’s apparent helplessness in this matter has been boosted by its patriarchal vision of society. It appears unmoved by the fact that Balochistan has the worst female literacy rate (20 per cent) in the country and that girls’ schools in the NWFP and Fata are being constantly targeted. The strategy of attacking female education undermines all hopes of society moving towards greater enlightenment. In the absence of any security guarantees from the government, parents are withdrawing their daughters from school in militancy-infested areas, while civil society has failed to react to this crisis. In Karachi, the MQM has sounded a warning that needs to be heeded. Political parties that do not share the Talibanisation agenda should now be mobilising the people to ward off the creeping evil.