Taliban destroy 60% of schools in northwest Pakistan

Aug 04, 2009 – SWAT valley, Pakistan (July 14, 2009) Student World Assembly (SWA) has become increasingly concerned for citizens and students living in the northwestern Swat valley of Pakistan, where there has been ongoing violence due to the fighting between Pakistani Taliban groups and the military. The fighting has lead to the displacement of nearly two million people from their homes. Most of the refugees are living in tents set up in neighboring districts with inadequate facilities or assistance. Only ten percent have re-settled in camps set up by the government or agencies. Officials say about 700 militants have been killed in the military offensive, but hundreds of thousands citizens remain stranded in Swat valley because of curfews, absence of transport, and a lack of alternate housing. This is the largest internal displacement of people in Pakistan since August 1947, when the country split from India after independence from British rule. Swat Valley is located 100 miles from Islamabad, and was once a common tourist destination. In 2007 the Taliban took control of nearly eighty percent of the Swat Valley territory. Since the Taliban took over, they have committed serious human rights abuses in Swat Valley, including the unlawful killing of many government workers. Pakistani Taliban has publicly displayed over two dozen bodies of those who violated their edicts at the main square of Mingora, the Swat Valley area’s largest city, now known as “bloody square.” The Taliban has also implemented a campaign against secular education, particularly targeting female schools. In the past 18 months, the Taliban has destroyed over 170 schools, over 100 of which were girls’ schools, disrupting the education of over 50,000 students of various levels. An SWA Advocate residing in the SWAT district spoke of the Taliban disruption of the education system, stating, “6 students were shot in the Jehan Zeb College” and “educational institutions are being blown, blasted and buried by the Taliban.” The response to the presence of 30,000 Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley has been the deployment of up to 15,000 government troops that often participate in indiscriminate use of heavy artillery and military operations. The current surge in fighting in SWAT began late April after militants dishonored a peace deal between pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad and the government of North West Frontier Province to end a two-year bloody conflict over imposition of Islamic Sharia law in the valley.