Pakistan

Swat girl offers ray of hope in former militant stronghold

The teenager, Zenab Sanah, made headlines in local press by securing first position among girls in the SSC exams.

Express June 23, 2010

“Now it seems like a nightmare when Taliban were dynamiting our schools and stopping us from attending classes,” says a teenage girl from Swat district where Maulana Fazlullah recently led a bloody rebellion against the government.

The teenager, Zenab Sanah, made headlines in local press by securing first position among girls in the SSC exams conducted by the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education.

“I wasn’t able to sleep properly. The ghastly images of bearded Taliban brandishing swords haunted me like ghosts,” Sanah told The Express Tribune. “I was anxious about my studies, about my school, and about my future,” she added.

Sanah said she had never thought that she would be able to complete her education while Maulana Fazlullah’s loyalists were out to erase whatever they considered was “un-Islamic”.

Sanah is a resident of the Koza Bandi area, the former headquarters for Maulana Fazlullah and his obscurantist followers. Koza Bandi was the first place in Malakand division where the radical cleric had renamed “Shariate Bandi” after self-imposing sharia in the village. The area was also home to top leadership of the Swat chapter of the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, where they used to have regular consultative sessions.

The Taliban banned music, shaving off beards and abolished secular education. They destroyed hundreds of state-run schools and blew up barber shops during their campaign for enforcement of their own version of Shariah in the region. Sanah was a student of the Government Girls School Koza Bandi. However, she had to leave the school after the Taliban banned female education in the region. However, she continued her education as a private candidate. “I still live in Koza Bandai. But it is a different place today,” she said.

Alarmed by the growing activities of militants, the government in 2009 sent thousands of troops to restore its writ in Swat. The troops successfully fought off the militants and restored peace in the region. Now Swat is recovering, with cultural activities picking up and schools reopening once again. “It’s over now. The Taliban, the ruthless killers, the barbarians, are no more in Swat. The obscurantist militants, with their myopic worldview, are gone,” Sanah said. “Education is universal. You cannot stop it,” Sanah said with a glint of hope in her eyes

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2010.

COMMENTS (9)

Anjum Hameed | 13 years ago | Reply It is appalling how the people of Pakistan allowed this culture of insanity to flourish over decades, leading to what is happening in our country now..no one had the guts to tell the so-called 'preachers' of Islam, be they women or men, that all they were spouting was hatred and bigotry, and NOT religion..even now you see our educated classes attending lectures on Islam, given by those who have nothing to teach but their OWN brand of religion..since we have no priesthood, where have all these 'priests' shown up from??..and what ever happened to using our brains and reading the Quran for ourselves??..

Shazia | 13 years ago | Reply We are so happy to have this news in Express tribune, thanks to give importance to our beautiful land the Swat. no one can stop us from getting education. we will prove it, Pakistan Zinda Abad.