Politicians retreat behind high walls, aid organizations venture out with caution and soldiers are heavily armed and barricaded.
But in Afghanistan and Pakistan it is often young girls, with their earnest faces framed by headscarves and walking to school holding hands, who are vulnerable to the political violence gripping their countries.
As the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, separate movements with similar goals, wage vicious campaigns against the state in both countries, the issue of girls' education is a pawn to gain power.
Sending girls to school is dangerous, said Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan MP speaking from Kabul. Afghan girls face death threats and acid attacks from religious extremists. Walking to school means risking roadside bombs. Once they are in school — which is supposed to be a safe environment — they worry about suicide bombers or gunmen bursting into the classroom.
"These kinds of attacks against girls happen many times in Afghanistan as they try to get their basic Islamic right to an education," she said. "It is not surprising it is happening in Pakistan either."
Last year there were 185 documented cases of attacks on schools in Afghanistan, including suicide bombings and arson, according to UN figures. The vast majority were carried out by Taliban insurgent groups.
In Pakistan, there were 152 cases of schools being hit by bombs or explosives in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. In some cases schools are attacked because they cater to girls and in other instances because they provide a so-called secular education which is linked to the West.
There are few educational opportunities for girls in Pakistan, and not just in the tribal areas. The country has 163,000 primary schools but only 40,000 cater to girls, according to the UN.
The issue has been thrown into the international spotlight by Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old who was shot in the head on Oct. 9 by a Taliban gunman near her home in the Swat Valley which is in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Two of her classmates were also injured.
The bullet was removed from Malala's head but she remains in critical condition in a military hospital in Rawalpindi. Police in her hometown of Mingora said they arrested a number of suspects but declined to give details.
In a country which is numb to the daily carnage of hits on mosques, bazaars and restaurants, Malala's shooting has provoked particular revulsion. On Friday prayer services were held for the young girl across Pakistan.
The tragedy may be a turning point in how Pakistan deals with extremism.
An editorial in The News, a popular Pakistani newspaper, Thursday said: "The mindset that sees Malala on a life-support machine did not emerge overnight; it is the product of a complex weave of issues, conspiracy theories, prejudices, poverty and deprivation and an antiquated system of education that does nothing to lessen the grip of extremism on a credulous population."
Pakistan's army may now use the mounting public outrage against the attack on Malala as a pretext to move against religious militants. Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful chief of army staff issued an unusual statement condemning the gunmen.
"We wish to bring home a simple message: We refuse to bow before terror. We will fight, regardless of the cost we will prevail," he said.
In neighbouring Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban may be retreating from their extreme position on girls' education because of a backlash from the rural population, said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network. In 2009, the government was forced to shut down 800 schools in towns and villages hardest hit by the insurgency.
"The position on the Taliban side now is not to attack," he said. "They've closed down schools but re-opened them. This is clever from their point of view because they want to control these areas and see themselves as a parallel government. So they need to respond to the population's demands and provide services. It's hearts and minds."
This may be part of a tactic on the part of the Afghan Taliban leadership to negotiate an eventual political settlement with Kabul. Commanders have struck deals with the ministry of education in some areas where they ceased attacks on schools in exchange for Taliban-approved curriculum which stresses religious learning.
By contrast, the Pakistani Taliban are less concerned with hearts and minds, Ruttig said.
"The Pakistani Taliban are much more hardline than the Afghan Taliban. They are less rooted in that society so they care less about what the public thinks. They tend to be drawn from uprooted groups and criminals."
Despite the public backlash, the Pakistani Taliban has promised that they will kill Malala if she is released from hospital.
But the Afghan Taliban cannot be trusted based on their history, said Manizha Naderi, of Women for Afghan Women, an aid organization based in Kabul.
"I don't believe them. They are subjugating 50 per cent of the population, females, to violence. That 50 per cent of the population is on its knees is how they gain power. They are not being educated or working so there's more power to the Taliban."
Barakzai said that many Afghan girls were determined to forge ahead.
Recently she visited a hospital in Logar province, just outside Kabul, where a teacher and several of her students were being treated for gunshot wounds.
"I asked the teacher, 'What will you do'? She said she was studying and working part-time but when she recovered she would try to be a full-time teacher."
There are stories like this everywhere, Barakzai said.
"I remember when an acid attack happened on a girls' school in Kandahar a couple of years ago. The day after, the mothers of the girls dropped their daughters off at school."
With files from Associated Press
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario