| Education crisis in the south with 200 schools closed IRIN
02/08/2006
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KANDAHAR - Sitting in her windowless, smoke-blackened classroom, Zubaida, 15, a ninth grade student, is happy to attend school again after an arson attack destroyed her secondary school in southern Kandahar two weeks ago. Education in the volatile region is in crisis as insurgents ruthlessly target schools, teachers and pupils, creating a climate of fear. "We go home by different routes every day because of threats and intimidation," Zubaida explained. "All of our teachers are frightened. I used to leave school in the evening but now I leave at noon. I even have to disguise myself by wearing a turban," said Abdul Nazir, headmaster of the school that teaches 1,300 boys and girls. "My family is trying to persuade me to leave the job, they are afraid I will be killed by militants," Nazir maintained. Militants, battling US and government forces have recently launched numerous attacks on schools and teachers in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. Suspected Taliban guerillas set fire to three primary schools in the Nawa district of Helmand in January. The siege on schools appears to be having the desired effect. "We have closed 50 schools where around 10,000 students were studying in Kandahar province due to insecurity and fear of attacks," said Hayat Allah Rafiqi, head of the education department in Kandahar, adding that more than 200 schools in total had been closed in southern Afghanistan due to the violence. "Thousands of students are deprived of education and are sitting in their homes. The situation for education is getting worse day by day," Rafiqi noted, calling on the government to do more to ensure the safety of educational institutions. Analysts Qasim Akhgar believes that the south is a vicious circle of insecurity feeding lack of development feeding support for militants, whose message, that Kabul has done nothing for local people and that things were better under the Taliban, is finding attentive ears. "Slow rebuilding, poverty, unemployment, lack of alternative livelihoods to poppy cultivation are all feeding the ongoing attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan," he said. One of the new government's main achievements has been the ability to offer education to far more young Afghans than in the past. The Taliban banned girls from attending school and ensured the curriculum for boys was largely religion-based. Now the situation in the south threatens to unravel progress in education. "Two days after admitting my children – a boy and a girl - to school, I found a pamphlet hanging on the gate of my house warning me to stop sending them to school otherwise I would face serious consequences," a villager in the Arghandab district of Kandahar told IRIN, requesting anonymity. In December, a suspected Taliban gunmen dragged a teacher from his classroom and shot him at the gates of his school after he ignored warnings to stop teaching boys and girls in a mixed class in the southern province of Helmand. In a separate attack, also in December, gunmen shot and killed an 18-year-old male student and a guard at another school in Helmand. In Zabul province, also in the south, in another gruesome incident, a teacher was dragged from his home and beheaded in February. Insecurity remains a key issue in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Despite the deployment of thousands of US and NATO forces, at least 1,600 people died in conflict-related violence in 2005. Ninety-one US troops died in combat or as a result of accidents in 2005 - more than double the total for 2004.
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