Word: school
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...numbers show the extent of the war on education by the Pakistani Taliban. At least 473 schools across Swat and Federally Administered Tribal Areas have been destroyed over the past two years. Militants recently blew up a 12-room state-run high school and health clinic for boys in Hangu district, a small area nestled on the border of North Waziristan and the North-West Frontier Province. And they routinely blow up girls' schools in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and North-West Frontier Province. Three have been destroyed in the past two weeks. (See pictures of suicide-bomb attacks...
...targeting of schools - especially girls' and co-educational institutions - had long been restricted to the tribal belt in the northwest of the country. But the government offensive against militants in South Waziristan has changed that. A double-suicide attack on the International Islamic University in Islamabad in October sent government officials and parents in cities into a frenzy. Across the country, schools were told to close and security measures quickly improvised. Up to 30 million public and private students from pre-kindergarten through high school were affected, according to the latest figures from the Pakistan Ministry of Education...
...contrast is stark. At the government-run Islamabad Model College for Boys, an aged and unarmed doorman provides security. If someone hopped over the walls out of sight of the guard, no one would know. At the end of the school day, anxious fathers crowd around the gate, collect their children and scurry toward a traffic jam of cars choking the street. A suicide bomber would find it a tempting target...
...school has 1,500 students grades 1-12. If something happens, says Atiq ur-Rahman, a chemistry teacher, the school is ill equipped to protect its students. "We don't even have a security guard equipped with weapons," he says. He says he can't handle a dangerous situation and that the students and staff feel vulnerable. If a suicide bomber targeted the school, "we could only request him not to explode...
...Taliban's campaign against schools, however, seems quixotic. On the one hand, the militants are well known to oppose educating girls. On the other, attacking boys' schools seems to be further alienating the populace. Not that the government has been able to capitalize on this; its tight-fisted response to paying for school security - in essence, it doesn't - has angered parents and teachers alike. One judge on the influential Lahore High Court dismissed a petition from the Private School Owners Association for more government help by saying schools should arrange for their own security. "Everything should not be left...