Pakistan: Destroyed girls’ schools to reopen soon
KARACHI, Pakistan Pakistan will push to quickly reopen girls’ schools destroyed by the agency of Islamic militants in the population’s lawless northwest, the information minister said Sunday.
The militants’ efforts to deter girls from attending school in Pakistan are darkly reminiscent of the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which banned education for girls and forced most acting women to go to their homes.
Speaking to reporters in the skilled in commerce hub of Karachi, Sherry Rehman said all efforts would be made to ensure that classes in the Swat valley resume in March following the winter break.
“We choose try our best to reopen girls’ schools and we will act of trying to give the girls assurance. We have to parade them a ray of hope,” Rehman reported.
Reopening the schools decision be largely contingent on restoring security in the bottom, which lies just outside Pakistan’s tribally governed strip along the Afghan limit. The West is concerned that al-Qaida leaders have found refuge in the area.
Taliban guerrillas have been waging a bloody contention against security forces in the dingle for greater degree of than a year, prompting local police and government authorities to flee.
In recent months, militants have blown up or burned down some 170 schools, most of them for girls, and demanded in December that all schools through respect to girls be closed by Jan. 15. An association representing 400 private schools has uttered they would remain closed after the winter break because of the threat.
Since their 2001 ouster, the hard-line Islamist movement’s followers have been blamed for scores of arson attacks on schools in Afghanistan, many of them built with Western give support to. An acid attack through Taliban insurgents last year maimed several girls.
The rise of Taliban groups in neighboring Pakistan has brought similar violence.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008643182_apaspakistangirlsschools.html?syndication=rss
