According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child every child has the right to education. However, there are few places in the world where the distance between declaration and reality is as great as in the remote Swat Valley in the troubled northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan.
On December 25, 2008, the local Taliban leader banned girls from attending schools after January 15, and announced that violators would be punished. The Media Line spoke to Zia-ud-Din Yousafzai, a school teacher and president of the private schools association in the Swat Valley to find out how he is dealing with the situation.
TML: How is the school system in Pakistan organized?
Yousafzai: We have two types of educational systems in Swat. One is the government system and the other is the private system. In the government system there are more than 1,500 institutions for boys and girls, and more than 400 private institutions are functioning in the private sector both for boys and for girls.
TML: Are all schools just boys and girls or are there mixed ones?
Yousafzai: In the private school system, some 20 institutions have separate campuses for female education in the higher-level secondary schools. In all 400 schools at the primary level up to grade four and five, boys and girls study together in the same institution, so you can say there is coeducation. But at the higher level, grade four and above, we have separate campuses for the girls.
TML: What is the attendance rate?
Yousafzai: The total population in the district is 1.7 million, and some 52,000 [children] go to school, of whom 25,000 are girls.
TML: There has recently been a wave of violence against schools in the Swat Valley. When did the violence start?
Yousafzai: The violence started two years ago when the militants became extreme and started heinous strikes against government property. Some 140 schools have been blown up so far. We thought that as the government targeted the houses of the militants during the security forces operation, the militants would target government properties. But later on they [the militants] also targeted some private schools and colleges.
One missionary school that was established in 1955 before we merged with Pakistan [Swat was a separate state until 1969], was blown up and the Taliban spokesman said that it was a missionary school and Christianity was taught [there], but he was really telling a lie and there was nothing like that [happening]. Another institution called Excelsior College, where some 3,000 students were studying, was blown up with the excuse that it was coeducational. But this was not true. Later on they also targeted the private institutions. Last month, on December 25, [Taliban leader] Maulana Fazalullah announced on his radio program that female students would not be allowed to go to any school after January 15.
The private school association… made an appeal through the newspaper to the heads of the Taliban asking them to review their decision. So in light of that appeal and also in light of the request of Mullah Umer, who is the head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan, they reviewed their decision, allowing girl students up to grade four but their decision regarding students from grade five and above is still intact. So, while we usually have winter vacation from January 1 to January 31, since the threats from Maulana Fazalullah we extended our school working days to January 14 to get maximum benefit from the deadline.
Now the government is trying to convince us that they will give us security and is requesting that we reopen our schools in February. But we are adopting a wait-and-see policy to see if peace is restored, and if the security situation is quite good then we will be able to reopen our girls schools from year five and above. However, if the situation prevails as it is today, we won’t be able to reopen our schools even at the request of government officials.
TML: Has the government provided any police or military forces to protect the schools?
Yousafzai: They are offering security only for the municipal Mengora area where there are only 70 schools, and only 10 schools where there are separate female colleges from grade five and above. But we have 400 schools [in total]. They are offering us security inside and outside the school campuses, but we are unable to accept that because peace should not be restored in part, it should be resorted as a whole. After Fazalullah’s announcement on December 25, half of the students were absent the following morning because they were scared and their parents did not allow them to go school.
So, in this present scenario, even if we [were to] open the schools and the government provided security, parents would not be able to send their children to school unless they heard on the radio [of Maulana Fazalullah] orders to reopen the schools. A second important thing is that if the Taliban are going to keep schools closed at gunpoint and the government is going to open it at gunpoint, this is quite a tense situation and we won’t be able to operate or function. It is also a matter of security as some children come to school from kilometers away. So, who will give them security on the way to school and home again? That is the question.