The Taliban blew up a girls' school in Pakistan's Khyber district, where troops are fighting against militants in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, an official said on Wednesday.
Militants detonated explosives overnight at the government-run school in Bazgarah town, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Peshawar, capital of the violence-plagued North West Frontier Province.
"The building had 21 rooms. All have been completely demolished," local administration chief Shafeerullah Wazir told AFP by telephone.
There were no casualties because the property was empty at the time.
"Taliban and their local allies are responsible. They are destroying educational institutions to avenge the military operation against their hideouts in the area," said Wazir.
"This was the ninth educational institution blown up in Khyber over the past six weeks," he added.
Islamist militants opposed to co-education and subscribers to sharia law have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in northwest Pakistan in recent years.
It could be suggested that the uptick in the demolition of schools in the past six weeks has something to do with "avenging" themselves against increased military operations against them--but look at who and what they are targeting. Are they seeking military targets?
No. They are blowing up schools. Which they have done for years, anyway, because they don't approve of women being educated (not that they are such great fans of education in general, the meaning of the word "talib" being left quite aside). And they like to attack girls and women, too. Isn't that brave of them?
Of course not. Educated women means independent women. Education in general means a less fearful and superstitious populace. Military operations against them are a hindrance--
But what do they actually fear? Smart little girls? Literacy? Progress?
I've read suggestions here and there that there might be a kind of "good Taliban"--an acceptance that they are a part of the culture of that area, and we let them take care of their part of the world and expect in return that they don't let their extremists loose in our part of the world. But I can't see it. The bombing of a school (mercifully, an empty school) is for me the clearest representation of why I don't see containment or detente as possible. To me, it looks looks like half of the population would be held hostage by a small-minded minority. And that ruling minority would have no power or even incentive to stop the extremists, because in their hearts and minds they are them. They would harbor them; they would fund them.
I'm no kind of expert. I can grasp the arguments against America's further involvement in terms of what has already been expended there. Call me a sucker for the idea of progress, or call me confused because I see a need for intervention in this area where I didn't see it in Iraq (but of course, two totally different areas--two totally different needs), but I don't want the kind of people who see a symbolic danger in a girls school running anything in this world. I get that war is hell. But the world these people could create would be a kind of hell, too.
I wish we humans weren't so adept at envisioning so many forms of hell.
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