Insurgents Burn Schools

Loya Waila, Afghanistan
February 7, 2006
An article from The Middle East Times reported last week that four men armed with pistols had entered the school in Loya Waila village just outside the southern city of Kandahar - the former stronghold of the ousted Taliban regime - and locked three janitors into a classroom, igniting it. The janitors were later rescued by local villagers.
Officials of this attack on the Qabial co-ed primary school is believed to be an attack on “peace and stability.” The violence has seen more than a dozen schools set ablaze over the past two months in Kandahar and its neighboring provinces, and several teachers and educational workers killed, including a headmaster who was beheaded in Zabul on January 14.

Kandahar education Chief Hayatullah Rafiqi, said burning schools is another way for insurgents to build fear and attack the government at the same time. Since 2002, the development of education was on a rise. Now, with the burnings, more than 150 schools have shut in the last four months. Parents are scared to send their kids off to school, and teachers are afraid to do their job. Back in Qabial, a couple of weeks after the incident, only 8 of the 35 students reported on the first day of the semester. Click here for the full story.