THE atrocity in Peshawar on Tuesday underscores the particular vulnerability of schoolchildren and educational institutions in Pakistan.

In essence, schools and the young learners within them are perhaps the most vulnerable of all the ‘soft’ targets on the militants’ hit list.

For long, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata have witnessed militant violence targeting schools. For example, as per an International Crisis Group report, in the period from 2009 to 2012, between 800 to 900 schools were attacked in KP and the tribal areas. In most of these incidents the extremists chose to strike empty schools, in a symbolic gesture, without causing many casualties.

Also read: Another December 16, another black day

But perhaps out of frustration, the militant camp has shed any inhibitions about targeting schoolchildren and now has no qualms about slaughtering students, as the Peshawar tragedy shows.

Girls’ education has been a particular thorn in the obscurantists’ side. The conflict in the tribal belt has also upset the education of local children in other ways, as thousands of families have fled the region for safer climes. Fata and KP are not the only areas where education has come under attack.

A school principal was killed in an incident in Karachi carried out by suspected militants last year, while also in 2013 a terrorist assault on a university bus in Quetta killed a number of female students.

This year, too, began on a bloody note, when a suicide bomber targeted a school in Hangu. Were it not for the selfless heroism and sacrifice of young Aitzaz Hasan, a student who confronted the bomber and tackled him, greater carnage could have resulted in the schoolhouse packed with students.

Unfortunately, this time around there was no Aitzaz to confront the monsters who stormed the Army Public School.

The militants have declared war on education, and by extension on society. Perhaps only Nigeria’s dreaded Boko Haram outfit has a more ferocious anti-education agenda in the murky global militant spectrum.

There, of course, needs to be greater security of schools, especially in vulnerable areas. But more than posting a policeman or paramilitary trooper outside every threatened school, a more long-term solution is required.

For too long, violent obscurantists have been allowed to publicly spew venom on modern education in Pakistan with barely any reaction from the state.

It is time these avowed opponents of learning were taken to task and uprooted in order to allow the youth of this country to build a brighter, literate future.

Published in Dawn December 18th , 2014