Afghan schools face torch

Just after midnight on Jan. 8, four armed men jumped over the wall of the Kabael Primary School in Loyawala, just outside of Kandahar, and began to spread 40 liters of kerosene inside the classrooms that regularly host 1,350 students.

The caretakers, who were unarmed, could do nothing but watch, and shiver in the night. The masked men waited just long enough for the fires to engulf the primary school, and then they left, bringing yet another bit of terror to the lives of Afghan villagers here.

"For 30 years ,we have been burned by these flames, this fighting," says one of the caretakers, Mohammad Sadeq, himself a former resistance fighter against the Soviets. "But this is our country; these children are from our soil. If we don't help them learn, who will?"

Across southern Afghanistan, night raids like the one in Loyawala are eroding one of the few solid gains that Afghanistan has made since the fall of the Taliban: education. By threatening or killing teachers and principals, and burning down schools, insurgents have found a method for bringing the war home to ordinary Afghans, and to weaken their faith in a government that appears unable to protect them and their children. The repercussions are just now being felt.

"The reason they attack schools is that they are a soft target," says Engineer Abdul Quadar Noorzai, regional manager of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar. "They get a lot of attention when they burn a school. The news goes up to the sky. The sad thing is that we didn't have good schools before this happened. Now it is like putting salt in our wounds."

Kandahar is certainly not the only Afghan province where such tactics are being used. Monday night, six armed people tried to burn a girls school in Laghman Province, but the village awoke and the attackers fled. Three primary schools were burned in Helmand Province on Friday.

But with eight schools burned in the current school year, Kandahar is the center of antigovernment activity. Government officials blame the Taliban for the attacks, something that Taliban spokesmen deny. But no matter who the culprit is, the government is struggling to stop the burnings.

"All over the world, there is no protective police force for schools," says Gov. Asadullah Khalid, the new governor of Kandahar. "This is an easy target for them. We have taken some measures, but I can tell you we expect the people to feel responsible and to take further steps themselves" to protect their schools.

Hayatullah Rifiqi, the education chief for Kandahar Province, says that Kabul has been cooperative in adding police to districts where attacks have taken place. Currently, his main task is getting the far-flung district of Maruf to open up its 42 schools, which currently remain shut because of threats.

Page: 1 | 2