Destroying education

The constant tug of war between progress and regression in our beloved country does not seem to end. If the battle against progress loses, we will go crashing down a cliff, with gravity — or, in our case, the Taliban — pulling us down until we have crashed and destroyed every single backbone left in our structure. As this developing nation seeks to put more of its children into schools, the terrorists continue to destroy these schools. The latest example is the bombing of a girls’ middle school in Hangu, in which four kilogrammes of explosives damaged classrooms and boundary walls. It seems that the motive of the terrorists is to spread their ideology that children should not attend school to engage in objective learning, and instead devote their lives entirely to religion.

Studying religion alone does not necessarily feed one’s family. Learning a trade or skill and applying one’s brain are required to earn a living. But this is an advanced thought for those who continue to bomb Pakistan’s schools. They are not only after spreading their rule over girls; their destruction of boys’ schools in the past suggests that they want to inhibit all of Pakistan’s youth. Hence, the tussle continues; some want the country to advance by giving our children education, while the Taliban continue to spread their dangerous ideology saying that children should remain out of school.

Neglecting to take action against the perpetrators will be a huge failure on the state’s part. If the state cannot handle it, then it must ask for help from those capable, be it an outside source or the military. Members of the state cannot look away. The ‘every man/woman for himself/herself’ theory must be done away with; the authorities must begin seeing all victims of the Taliban as their own. The state is responsible for bringing the criminals to justice and rebuilding our schools so that we can continue to educate our youth. We must be relentless in our struggle to spread education; setbacks such as these should not deter us.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th, 2012.