Insurgents targeting schools – HRW report

Escalating attacks by insurgents on teachers, students and schools in Afghanistan are shutting down educational institutions across the country, particularly in the south, a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned. The 142-page report, “Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan,” released on Monday, documented 204 attacks since January 2005. This number, which underestimates the severity of the crisis due to the difficulty of gathering data in Afghanistan, reflects a sharp increase in the level of violence in the country as the security situation in many areas continues to deteriorate, the report said. The attacks have been particularly targeted at those schools that offer both boys and girls the chance to learn in this conservative country. “Taliban insurgents are attacking schools because they believe that girls’ education is against Islam - they already banned girls’ education during their rule five years ago,” Habibullah Rafi, a local analyst, told IRIN. “Schools are being shut down by bombs and threats, denying another generation of Afghan girls an education and the chance for a better life,” Zama Coursen-Neff, co-author of the HRW report was quoted as saying.“Attacks on schools by the Taliban and other groups that are intended to terrorise the civilian population are war crimes and jeopardise Afghanistan’s future,” he said. "There appear to have been more attacks on the education system in the first half of 2006 than in all of 2005. Southern and southeastern Afghanistan face the most serious threat, but schools in other areas have also been attacked," the report revealed. According to officials at the Afghan education ministry, Taliban insurgents have destroyed 120 schools and forced a further 200 to close after their teachers and students were threatened by the ousted radical Islamic movement. “More than 200,000 girls and boys are deprived of education as a result [of the insurgency],” Mohammad Sadiq Fatman, Deputy Minister of Education, told IRIN. In Asadabad, capital of the eastern Kunar province, a rocket fired by Taliban guerrillas hit a primary school in April this year, killing at least six school children and injuring 14 others. In December 2005, a suspected Taliban gunman dragged a teacher from his classroom and shot him dead at the gates of his school after he ignored warnings to stop teaching boys and girls in a mixed class in the southern Helmand province. The report said that Taliban guerrillas were not the only group responsible group for attacking schools, but that local warlords and drug barons also carried out such acts to assert their authority and independence from Kabul. "Afghanistan's rapidly growing criminal networks, many of them involved in the production and trade of narcotics, also target schools because in many areas they are the only symbol of government authority," the report said. In a separate attack, also in December last year, gunmen shot and killed an 18-year-old male student and a guard at another school in Helmand. While in Zabul province, also in the south, a teacher was dragged from his home and beheaded in February.