Afghanistan: Militant Attacks on Education As Violence Climbs

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Afghanistan's United Nations mission condemned "anti-Government elements" in the country for using education as a political platform after a recent spate of violent attacks on education officials and institutions by insurgents. The UN Afghanistan Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) said Sunday it was seriously concerned over the recent attacks which violated Afghan children and "their right to education". Education is not a new battle ground in Afghanistan, with the Taliban's tactic of threatening harm to girls' schools and sending death notices to school teachers already well documented. Unama also said it has been monitoring "unacceptable levels of violence" over "the past year". However, a series of disconnected attacks across Afghanistan in the past week suggest that militants may be seeking to increase their power through the soft, but effective, target. The attacks include the assassination of education officials, poisoning water sources at girls' schools, the torching of a girls' school, and threatening harm to dozens of other schools if their doors remain open. "Unama condemns these attacks that aim to limit access to education and to intimidate civilians," the UN mission said in a released statement. "Unama also calls on the Government of Afghanistan and international military forces to ensure that effective security measures are in place to protect schools, students and teachers." UNAMA's calls for greater security follow those of Afghan lawmakers from the eastern Afghan province Ghazni. Ghazni MPs said in a Parliamentary session on April 30 that as many as 100 schools of the provinces 633 total had been closed at some point recently because of threats. Once a school reopens, some students do not return out of fear, making it difficult to renew classes and keep the school going, according to Ministry of Education official Attahullah Wahedyar. Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a public statement on May 5 in a radio address about the impact of school closures on the country. He called on militants who threatened schools to recognise they were ultimately harming Afghanistan's future, not their political enemies. A day later, gunmen fired upon a boys' school in Ghazni. Three students were wounded in the attack, the target of which remains unclear. But intimidation may have been the only aim. Insurgents in Afghanistan's far eastern Nangarhar province took intimidation to a new level when they set a girls' school alight in the Khogyani district on May 7. Taking lives was not the intention as the torching took place at around 10pm at night, but the incident, which seriously damaged the school property, followed threats that had closed as many as 10 schools in the district for a few days. The local Taliban had threatened to harm the schools if one of their own was not released from detention. Local officials had just ordered the schools reopen on the Monday. The torching took place Monday night. On May 8, as many as nine education officials were killed in two separate incidents on opposite sides of the country. Five education officials were killed and six others were wounded in a militant ambush on Tuesday afternoon while they were visiting schools in southeast Paktika province, which borders Pakistan. Meanwhile, four provincial education directors and five Afghan police were killed in a remote-controlled bomb blast late Tuesday in the western Farah province, which shares a border with Iran. On May 9, local officials in northern Balkh province told TOLOnews that as many as 100 schoolgirls and eight school teachers were taken to hospital after a suspected poisoning of the school's water source. It came only three weeks after a similar incident in the north-eastern Takhar province which saw 150 schoolgirls fall ill. Investigations into both tainted-water events remain inconclusive. Unama denounced these tactics as a violation of international humanitarian law, and the right to education, but is powerless to stop it.