KABUL, Afghanistan — The number of students and teachers killed in Taliban attacks has tripled in the past year in a campaign to close schools and force teenage boys to join the Islamic militia, Afghanistan’s education minister says.
While the overall state of Afghan education shows improvement, Education Ministry numbers point to a sharp decline in security for students, teachers and schools in the south, where the Taliban thrives: The number of students out of classes because of security concerns has hit 300,000 since March 2007, compared with 200,000 in the previous 12 months, while the number of schools closing has risen from 350 to 590.
The Taliban strategy is deliberate: “to close these schools down so that the children and primarily the teenagers that are going to the schools — the boys — have no other option but to join the Taliban,” Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar said Tuesday.
The Taliban know that educated Afghans won’t join the militants, so a closed school leaves students with two options — to join the Taliban or “to cross the border and go into those hate madrassas,” Atmar said, referring to Islamic seminaries in Pakistan where “they will be professionally trained as terrorists.”
Attacks on schools still in operation have actually fallen in the last 10 months — from 187 to 98 in the same period of 2006, Atmar said, attributing the drop to a community defense initiative. But the Taliban have switched to targeting students on their way to and from school or in other places where they congregate.
Atmar said 147 students and teachers have been killed in Taliban attacks since mid-March, compared with 46 in the previous year. The 147 include 58 students and teachers killed in a single bombing and gunfire attack in Baghlan province in November.
The number of students and teachers wounded has gone from 46 to 200, he said.
Most of the schools closed for security reasons are in the south. In Helmand, the world’s largest opium poppy growing region, 177 schools are closed, along with 150 in nearby Kandahar province, Atmar said.
Still, some 5.8 million students now attend class, up from 5.4 million a year ago, 35 percent of them female, Atmar said.
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