PAKISTAN has, in the past few weeks, witnessed ill-omened reminders of a demoralising aspect of militancy: the war on female education. On Thursday, armed men set fire to a girls’ middle school in Surab district of Kalat Division in Balochistan, reducing the staff room and other areas to ashes. This was the third such arson attack in May. A girls’ institution was torched in North Waziristan’s Razmak area on Tuesday where a former teacher has been arrested. The dropout rate for girls after primary school is dismal in the country, becoming the reason for the dearth of girls’ institutes in many parts, especially Balochistan. Hence, the female students enrolled in these institutions are doomed to a life without learning. While North and South Waziristan have endured frequent militant strikes on girls’ facilities recently, Balochistan had been safe from the brutal campaign for a few years. Now it seems that radical elements are determined to enforce mediaeval norms everywhere, even if it means causing damage and endangering lives.

What will be the likely fallout of such attacks? Families will keep their children at home, and once again, access to schooling and empowerment will elude thousands of girls in the tribal belt and Balochistan. Moreover, the ban on female education and businesses by the Taliban government in Afghanistan has given new strength to primitive attitudes. This is further complicated by the state’s timidity towards extremist elements, which amplifies all expressions of zealotry and its devastating impact on the country’s social, political and economic growth. Pakistan cannot afford to slide into violent extremism again. It must take urgent steps — more arbitrations and heightened pressure, safety measures for girls’ faculties and a comprehensive security strategy — to explicitly reject fanaticism. Militancy, in all its forms, excludes girls and women from educational participation, thereby aborting prospects of a large-scale socioeconomic revival. The state ought to recognise these attacks as a warning and do the needful so that terrorist threats and networks are pulled to pieces for good. A passive approach will create irreversible damage, such as a trust deficit between the people and the state, along with mass hesitancy to educate the girl child. The country has a moral obligation to safeguard every child’s academic freedom and equality of opportunity. It must fulfil its duty.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2024