In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, parents have been keeping their children away from school since the attack, and rumours run like wildfire through communities. The police are in a real dilemma. To deploy sufficient police to provide protection to government schools would mean taking many thousands of them from other duties — an unsustainable option. The federal government has allocated Rs7.5 billion to enhance government school protection but even that is probably little more than a drop in the ocean. All the advice and diligence aimed at protecting children and older students is not worth a hill of beans unless there is an effective counter to the narrative of terror espoused by those that would bring down the system of governance as well as all the education within it — education at every level being anathemous to them. As has been made clear in these columns innumerable times in the last three years, unless there is a concerted effort to erode and defuse the mindset that is the glue that holds together the fabric of terror, then attacks such as that at Bacha Khan will continue. Terrorism is only successful if it is allowed to be.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 23rd, 2016.
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