Torching of girls’ schools is an alarming development amidst Pakistan’s ‘Education Emergency’
Recent attacks on girls' schools in North Waziristan and Balochistan are being attributed to TTP, with parallels to incidents like the Peshawar School massacre
On 29 May, some miscreants used kerosene to set fire to a girls’ school in Ramzak tehsil of North Waziristan district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, destroying the institution’s furniture, computers and books, Dawn reported.
Earlier in May, another girls’ private school — one of its kind in the area — was blown up in Tehsil Shewa of North Waziristan after the school guard was tortured. Following this attack, target="_blank" href="https://www.unicef.org/rosa/press-releases/unicef-condemns-attack-girls-school-north-waziristan#:~:text=ISLAMABAD%2C%20Pakistan%20%E2%80%93%209%20May%202024,many%20young%20and%20talented%20girls.">UNICEF released a statement condemning the violence, with its Pakistani representative denouncing it as a “heinous crime detrimental to national progress”. This act even prompted Shehbaz Sharif, the newly-elected prime minister, to order the immediate reconstruction of the school on government expenditure.
Additionally, in the same month, two other girls’ schools bore the brunt of these attacks, one in South Waziristan and another in Balochistan. In May of last year, two girls’ schools in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan were blown up similarly.
What explains the recent upshot in such attacks, especially in the two Waziristans that border Afghanistan and have been former strongholds of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)?
A resurgent TTP
Though these no-casualty attacks have been perpetrated by unidentified men and remain unclaimed, it is a foregone conclusion that militants affiliated with the TTP are to blame. The TTP is an ideological, homegrown offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, which maintains its distinct organisational structure and a set of objectives.
When the group first reared its head in the early 2000s and officially came into being in December 2007, one of the initial signs of Talibanisation in Pakistan was threats and attacks directed at school-going girls and employed women, who were perceived as transgressing the militants’ strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law. Later, educational institutions were targeted since they were used for military purposes by the Pakistani Army as barracks or bases.
As attacks on girls’ schools escalate, the international community may be reminded about the acts of terrorism launched by the TTP on Pakistan’s education sector, notably the Army Public School, the Peshawar massacre in 2014 and the shooting of Nobel Prize recipient, Malala Yousafzai in 2012. Counter-terror operations, such as Zarb-e-Azb (2014) and Radd-ul-Fasaad (2017) had weakened the TTP to a large degree, leading to a decline in reported violence against schools.
Now, emboldened by the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in 2021, the TTP has embarked on a path of resurgence, striving to emulate the former which effectively banned women from getting access to secondary education and beyond. Despite nearing their third year in power and facing international condemnation for their discriminatory policies against women, the Afghan Taliban appear unrelenting in their stance. Unarguably, then, these attacks are knock-on effects of the Afghan Taliban’s regressive policies in bordering Afghanistan, which have an incalculable impact on Pakistani society that continues to wrestle with other barriers to education.
‘Education Emergency’
Around the time of the first explosion in May this year, Shehbaz Sharif declared an “education emergency”, with a renewed resolve to enroll approximately 26 million out-of-school children, a challenge deemed as “criminal negligence” by him. However, even for those in schools, the quality of education imparted remains substandard due to a lack of essential facilities, such as water, toilets, boundary walls and often qualified teachers.
Following its successful results in Punjab during his tenure as the chief minister, Sharif has sought to implement his version of welfare schools, called Daanish schools in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (or as per Pakistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan) and remote areas of Balochistan and Sindh to provide education to the lower rungs of society. In April, he laid the foundation for Islamabad’s first Daanish school, stating that the dream of Pakistan’s founding father, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, would remain incomplete without such educational initiatives.
The rhetoric on boosting the education sector has been a noteworthy aspect of Sharif’s premiership, with him pledging that the federal government would bear all expenses for these schools despite education being a ‘provincial subject’ under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment’s ambit was a matter of controversy recently when the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) — the body headed by both civil and military leaders to pull Pakistan out of its abject economic crisis — convened a meeting to review a new education policy. In response, a former chairman of Pakistan’s Senate criticised this move as “an infringement on provincial autonomy”, citing the 18th Amendment and stating that it is beyond the federal government’s wheelhouse to address this matter.
Regardless, the key point here is that the broad breadth of reforms required for Pakistan’s education sector needs sustained interventions, necessitating coordination between provincial and federal governments, while also adhering to the constitutional framework.
Pakistan, for starters, would have to increase its share of GDP on education to the oft-quoted 4 per cent. At present, Pakistan spends less than 2 percent of its GDP on education. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey of 2022-23, the overall literacy rate was slightly above 62%, with 73.4% for males and 51.9% for females. So, to bridge the gap between male and female literacy rates, particularly in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan could initiate awareness campaigns highlighting the importance of girls' education through the help of religious scholars and assuring parents of their safety. Failing to do so would inadvertently establish the writ of militants in the area, who desire to keep girls out of school.
More importantly, ensuring robust access to education for all is critical, given that the absence of it creates a fertile ground for future recruitments into militant networks, or may lead children to resort to madrassas, which offer free schooling and lodging, but have historically been recognised as breeding grounds for radicalisation.
As Pakistan fights to reverse the tide of a new wave of militancy, prioritising education will not only serve as an effective bulwark against it but also propel the nation forward on many fronts. This includes fulfilling Sustainable Development Goal 4, which talks of "ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all"; Pakistan committed to this when it espoused the SDGs as part of its national development agenda through a unanimous resolution in 2016.
Bantirani Patro is a research associate at the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal.
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