Attack on school
Terrorists know exactly where to strike, where it hurts the most and how the narrative of terror seeps into the fabric of society. Unfortunately, the state’s priorities of protection lie elsewhere. While schools have been routinely razed to the ground by militants in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and Fata, the authorities have done little to alter this state of affairs. The hand grenade attack on a school in Shabqadar, Charsadda, which killed a schoolteacher and injured two students on October 1, is the latest such tragedy to occur.
The threat to educational institutions in K-P and Fata is all too imminent now. This is not the first such incident and judging from the response of the authorities, it does not seem to be the last one either. Several schools in conflict-ridden areas are threatened by armed militants, who only know how to reinforce their ideology through brute force and violence. While Shabqadar is close to the Mohmand tribal belt, the situation in Peshawar has been no different. There have been incidents where schools have had to pay extortionists to keep the threat at bay. An estimated 2.5 million children are out of school in K-P, with more than 2,000 schools being dysfunctional because of the precarious law and order situation, among other contributing factors. The tribal belt is another story altogether; here, hundreds of thousands people are faced with a battle of survival, so acquiring an education is a far-fetched dream for them.
The outrage surrounding the Shabqadar incident will soon subside until another such incident takes place, but the psychological scars being inflicted upon our younger generation will not heal easily. We are told that the school will reopen soon, but needless to say, many children will drop out, as there will be parents who will think twice before sending them to the same school. One wonders if the authorities will set aside their seeming apathy and finally take some concrete measures to secure the future of our children. We will have no one to blame but ourselves if nothing is done to alter this state of affairs.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 3rd, 2014.
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