PAKISTANI GIRLS DEFY TALIBAN BOMBING

SWABI, Pakistan - Pakistan's Taliban movement, which is close to Al Qaida, has bombed hundreds of schools since launching a campaign to topple the US-backed government in 2007. Like Taliban militants in neighbouring Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban want girls barred from education.
But the Taliban have failed to sell their violent philosophy to the vast majority of Pakistanis, and a campaign to terrify people into supporting militancy has had limited success, as the defiance at Government Girls Primary School No 3 illustrates.

• The students age four to 15 are undoubtedly scared, and disappointed about the damage to their school in the town of Swabi, 75km northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
• The bombs set off in the red and white brick school complex recently were so powerful they stopped wall clocks at the time of impact 19 minutes past midnight.
• Instead of listening to lectures at their old wooden desks, the girls will be forced to sit on the grass in a courtyard until workers clean the rubble and shattered glass from classrooms pulverised by the bombs.
• Still, they are determined to stay in school, hoping to become doctors or lawyers and leave sleepy Swabi for big Pakistani metropolises, or work abroad dreams that enrage Taliban zealots.
• In their ideal world, women are covered from head to toe, only learn how to cook and clean to take care of their husbands, and rarely venture outside the home. Pakistani men would all grow beards, and the government would cut off all ties with the West and impose an austere system of Islamic law at home where those deemed immoral would be executed or whipped in public.
• The campaign to bomb girls schools gathered pace several years ago in the former tourist destination of Swat Valley, about a three-hour drive from Swabi. The regional faction of the Taliban, led by Maulvi Fazlullah — dubbed FM Mullah for his fiery radio broadcasts — was fighting to impose its version of Islam.

An army offensive in Swat forced Fazlullah to rebase across the border in Afghanistan. Yet he and his fighters have regrouped, started launching cross-border attacks on Pakistani troops, and have vowed to rule Swat again.
Sympathisers with Fazlullah and other Taliban leaders, meanwhile, frequently attack girls schools. That doesn't keep students like Sana Khan, 8, from walking several kilometres to School No 3. She is well aware of how ruthless the Taliban can be, often overhearing her parents speak of how the Taliban kidnap and behead people.

Source: Agency