Pakistan School Closings Stir Confusion, and Fears of More Attacks

By SABA IMTIAZ

A member of Pakistan’s Elite Police Force took part in a security drill at a school in Peshawar on Thursday.CreditA Majeed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Fears about potential follow-up attacks on Pakistani schools by Taliban militants created widespread confusion and school closings this week, even as officials urged calm.

The closing of the Pakistani military’s network of colleges and schools around Karachi, a little over a week after the Taliban attack that killed 21 people at Bacha Khan University in the northwestern town of Charsadda, prompted worry among many parents. Though the military’s decision and reasoning were not officially announced, news reports and social media posts about the closings led to widespread speculation that more attacks could be coming.

Those fears were heightened after officials said that public schools in Punjab Province, Pakistan’s most heavily populated region, were being kept closed because of suddenly dropping temperatures. Though officials assured parents that the schools would reopen soon and that the move had nothing to do with security, many were not in the mood to take chances.

“If there is one more incident, there is going to be a collapse,” said Aliya Agha, 47, a lawyer and activist in Islamabad. “Our greatest asset is at highest risk at the moment.”

Ms. Agha said she and other parents in the capital were contemplating pulling their children out of school and home-schooling them instead.

By Thursday afternoon, other parents were publicly pondering the same move, and social media groups were full of rumors and conjecture about the risks to educational institutions, gleaned from friends and relatives who claimed to have heard that more terrorist attacks might be coming.

The faction of the Pakistani Taliban that attacked Bacha Khan University last week has threatened as much: It warned in a video message that it would keep targeting schools. And officials at the university said it would stay closed until its security could be improved. But Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said that the government did not feel the security risk warranted the widespread closings of schools. “We cannot close our businesses and schools. This is what the militants want,” Mr. Khan told reporters in Islamabad on Thursday, adding that people must not give in to an “environment of fear.”

The Taliban’s targeting of education has long been a concern in Pakistan. But it came to the forefront after an attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014, when militants massacred dozens of schoolchildren.

That attack led to a sweeping Pakistani military offensive against militants in the tribal areas. At the same time, the government told private schools to adopt security measures such as installing barbed wire, hiring security guards and increasing the height of school walls. The result has been that most prominent private schools now resemble mini-fortresses. But many worry that, more generally, schools remain at risk.

Putting security measures into effect is almost impossible in a country where private schools proliferate and are often inside houses in residential neighborhoods or crowded alleys, said Norbert Almeida, a security expert based in Karachi. “You’re bound to have misses and impossibilities,” he said.

Mr. Almeida added that this week there was a state of “absolute confusion” given the lack of clarity on the exact nature of the threats.

“With the armed forces’ institutions closing and citing security concerns, then why are the private schools in the rest of the country open?” he said, echoing a question raised by parents.

Some universities in Karachi have enhanced their security measures in recent days. On Wednesday, the University of Karachi — which has over 30,000 students — organized a security sweep of its 1,365-acre campus with a bomb disposal squad. “We’ve hired 30 new private security personnel,” said Dr. Muhammad Zubair, the head of security at the university, which is public. Habib University, a private liberal arts school near the Karachi airport — the airport itself was attacked by militants in June 2014 — said it had upgraded its already high security arrangements.

In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, where the attacks at the Bacha Kahn University and the Army School occurred, many schools were conducting security drills so that students would know what to do if gunmen attacked again.Other schools decided that closing was the safer route, among them the Karachi American School, a high-profile private school that closed on Thursday.

Mina Malik-Hussain, a 32-year-old writer, said her children’s private school in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, was closed because of the government’s directive about the weather. She said that the school was usually upfront about security risks and that the government’s decision appeared to be coincidental. And she described a constant sense of concern that some parents have slowly tried to overcome.

“On WhatsApp groups, there’s always a conversation about who is sending their kids to school tomorrow. Eighty percent of moms send their kids,” she said, describing a shared sense of insistence that their children’s education should not be disrupted.