The Pakistan Taliban has destroyed over 838 schools between 2009 and 2012. Credit: Kulsum Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jan 21 2015 (IPS)

As a wave of outrage, crossing Pakistan’s national borders, continues a month after the Dec. 16 attack on a school in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, some citizens are turning away from collective expressions of anger, and beginning the hard work of building grassroots alternatives to terrorism and militancy.

While many millions of people are lashing out at the Taliban for going on a bloody rampage in a school in the province’s capital, Peshawar, killing 141 people including 132 uniformed children in what is being billed as the group’s single deadliest attack to date, The Citizens Foundation (TFC), a local non-profit, has reacted quite differently.

"With the formidable challenges facing the nation, we passionately believe that only education has the power to enlighten minds, instil citizenship and unleash the potential of every Pakistani." -- Syed Asaad Ayub Ahmad, CEO of The Citizens Foundation (TCF)
Rather than join the chorus calling for stiff penalties for the attackers, it busied itself with a pledge to build 141 Schools for Peace, one in the name of each person who lost their life on that terrible day.

“We dedicate this effort to the children of Pakistan, their right to education and their dreams of a peaceful future,” Syed Asaad Ayub Ahmad, CEO of TCF, said in an email launching the campaign.

“With the formidable challenges facing the nation, we passionately believe that only education has the power to enlighten minds, instil citizenship and unleash the potential of every Pakistani,” he added.

In their war against western, secular education, which the group has denounced as “un-Islamic”, the Pakistan Taliban have destroyed over 838 schools between 2009 and 2012, claimed responsibility for the near-fatal shooting of teenaged education advocate Malala Yousafzai and issued numerous edicts against the right of women and girls to receive proper schooling.

In their latest assault on education, nine militants went on an eight-hour-long killing spree, throwing hand grenades into the teeming school premises and firing indiscriminately at any moving target. They claim the attack was a response to the military operation aimed at rooting out the Taliban currently underway in North Waziristan, a tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

While armed groups and government forces answer violence with more of the same, the active citizens who comprise TCF want to shift focus away from bloodshed and onto longer-term solutions for the future of this deeply troubled country.

The charity, which began in 1995, has completed 1,000 school ‘units’, typically a primary or secondary institution capable of accommodating up to 180 pupils, all built from scratch in the most impoverished areas of some 100 towns and cities across Pakistan.

The 7,700 teachers employed by the NGO go through a rigorous training programme before placement, and the organisation maintains a strict 50:50 male-female ratio for the 145,000 students who are now benefitting from a free education, according to TCF Vice President Zia Akhter Abbas.

In a country where 25.02 million school-aged children – of which 13.7 million (55 percent) are girls – do not receive any form of education, experts say TCF’s initiative may well act as a game changer in the years to come, especially given that the government spends just 2.1 percent of its GDP on education.

“Our job is to ensure that wherever we have our schools, there are no out-of-school children, especially girls,” Abbas told IPS. “We believe the change in society will come automatically once these educated and enlightened children grow up into responsible adults.”

Of the 25.02 million school-aged children who are not receiving a proper education, 13.7 million, or 55 percent, are girls. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

He added that the schools are designed to “serve as a beacon of light restricting the advance of extremism in our society.”

The project has received widespread support from a broad spectrum of Pakistani society. Twenty-four-year-old Usman Riaz, a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston who recently donated the proceeds of his jam-packed concerts in Karachi to TCF’s efforts, says the Schools for Peace are a “wonderful way to honor the innocent victims”.

But it will take more than one-off charitable donations to make the scheme a reality. It costs about 15 million rupees (148,000 dollars) to build and equip each new school, so the total bill for all 141 institutions stands at some 21 million dollars.

With a track record of building 40-50 schools a year, however, the NGO is confident that it will honor its pledge within three years.

Combating extremism

Besides immortalizing the victims of the Taliban’s attack, experts here say that shifting the focus away from terrorism and onto education will help combat a growing pulse of religious extremism.

The prominent Pakistani educationist and rights activist A.H. Nayyar told IPS that it is crucial for the country to begin educating children who would otherwise be turned into “fodder for extremists”.

In fact, part of the government’s 20-point National Action Plan – agreed upon by all political parties dedicated to completely eradicating terrorism – includes plans to register and regulate all seminaries, known here as madrassas, in a bid to combat extremism at its root.

With thousands of such religious institutions springing up across the country to fill a void in the school systems, policy-makers are concerned about the indoctrination of children at a young age, with distorted interpretations of religious texts and the teaching of intolerance playing a major role in these schools.

Some sources say that between two and three million students are enrolled at the nearly 20,000 madrassas spread across Pakistan; others say this is a conservative estimate.

While there is some talk about bringing these institutions under the umbrella of the public school system, experts like Nayyar believe this will do little to combat the “forcible teaching of […] false and distorted history, excessive emphasis on Islamic teachings to the extent of including them in textbooks of all the subjects, explicit teaching of jihad and militancy, hate material against other nations, peoples of other faiths, etc, [and] excessive glorification of the military and wars.”

Nayyar and other independent scholars have been at the forefront of calling for an overhaul of the public school curriculum, which they believe is at odds with the goals of a modern, progressive nation.

But until policy-makers and politicians jump on the bandwagon, independent efforts like the work of TCF will lead the way.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Pakistan’s announcement that it has lifted the moratorium on the death penalty in response to the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar continues to draw severe criticism from human rights groups, which say that this contravenes international treaties signed by Pakistan.

“We are extremely concerned over the death penalty for Shafqat Hussain, who is likely to be among those facing execution by hanging,” Clive Stafford Smith, director of the UK-based rights group Reprieve, told IPS in an email interview.

Shafqat Hussain, then 14, was working as a watchman in Karachi when seven-year-old Umair Shah went missing from the neighbourhood in April 2004. A few days later, Umair’s family received calls from Hussain’s mobile phone demanding a ransom of Rs500, 000 (7,800 dollars) for the boy’s release, according to Hussain’s lawyers.“We are extremely concerned over the death penalty for Shafqat Hussain [convicted while still only 15 ], who is likely to be among those facing execution by hanging” – Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve

Police arrested Hussain, who admitted to kidnapping and killing Umair, whose body had been recovered from a nearby stream.

Stafford Smith said that Hussain later withdrew his confession because it had been made under duress, but an anti-terrorism court sentenced him to death although Hussain was only 15 at the time. He called for suspension of Hussain’s death penalty in view of the fact that Pakistan is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Child, which prohibits the death penalty for children.

Amnesty International echoed similar concerns over Pakistan’s decision to resume the death penalty in response to the attack on the Army Public School and College which killed 148 – mostly children – and said that Hussain should have been tried in a juvenile court and not been given the death penalty, which cannot be imposed on minors in Pakistan.

Chiara Sangiorgio of Amnesty International said that Hussain’s case was not isolated because there were at least seven other death row prisoners who claimed to be under 18 when they committed their offences. Two had been convicted by anti-terrorism courts.

“The majority of people in Pakistan do not have a birth certificate, so it becomes very difficult for them to prove that they are juvenile … unless they have a good lawyer,” she said.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch pointed out that Hussain’s family had sent an appeal to the president to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, but to no avail. It deplored the fact that Hussain is now set to be executed after the lifting of moratorium.

On Dec. 24, the European Union (EU) also criticised the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty and called for its immediate reinstatement.

“We believe that the death penalty is not an effective tool in the fight against terrorism,” said EU envoy to Pakistan Lars-Gunnar Wigemark in a statement. “The EU remains opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances and expresses hope that the moratorium will be re-established at the earliest.”

The government has already executed six convicted militants in Punjab province – on Dec. 19 and 21 – including those involved in attacks on former President General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in October 2009, as part of its announced policy to speed up execution of death row inmates.

On Dec. 21, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan announced that the government plans to execute about 500 prisoners on death row in the coming weeks as revenge for the death of schoolchildren in the Peshawar attack.

“Terrorists deserve no mercy as they are killing our people, soldiers and schoolchildren,” Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told a meeting of all political parties in Islamabad on Dec. 24. Come what may, we will go ahead with our plans of hanging the condemned prisoners, Sharif told the meeting.

Reprieve, which spearheads the anti-death penalty campaign, notes that Pakistan has also signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits execution and therefore Pakistan must reinstate the moratorium in fulfilment of its international commitment.

“Killing a man who was arrested as a juvenile and tortured into a ‘confession’ will not bring justice and will merely add to the tragedy of the Peshawar school attack,” Clive said.

Meanwhile, Sarah Belal of Justice Project Pakistan quoted Hussain’s older brother Gul Zaman as telling reporters outside  Karachi prison: “The authorities applying the death penalty to terrorists, no problem for me, but they’re going down the wrong road executing ordinary criminals.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Funeral ceremony being held for victims of the Dec. 16 attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec 21 2014 (IPS)

As Pakistan lifts its moratorium on executions in response to this week’s attack on a school in  Peshawar, human rights groups say that resuming the death penalty will not combat terrorism in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that Pakistan had reinstated the death penalty the day after an attack on the Army Public School and College here that killed 150 people – mostly children – on Dec. 16.

A resolution unanimously adopted by an All Parties Conference in Peshawar on Dec. 17 said that with Pakistan facing increasing terrorism, it cannot afford to show any mercy to those involved in acts of militancy and killing of innocent people.“This [reinstatement of the death penalty] is a cynical reaction from the government. It masks a failure to deal with the core issue highlighted by the Peshawar attack, namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan“ – David Griffiths, Amnesty International

“I announce the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty today … The nation is fully behind us,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the conference categorically.

Since then, four people have been hanged in Punjab province for their involvement in attacks on former President General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003 and the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in October 2009, but Amnesty International says that the resumption of executions after they were stopped in 2008 will not break the vicious cycle of terrorism.

“This is a cynical reaction from the government. It masks a failure to deal with the core issue highlighted by the Peshawar attack, namely the lack of effective protection for civilians in north-west Pakistan,“ Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Asia-Pacific David Griffiths said in a statement.

The death penalty violates the right to life and we are deeply concerned at the multiple violations of international law the authorities are about to commit by going ahead with their execution plan, he added.

Amnesty International also says that many death sentences are handed down in Pakistan after trials that do not meet international fair trial standards.

The government, which is under tremendous pressure to deal with terrorism, claims that it had no choice but to reinstate executions, and religious groups and political parties have welcomed the hanging of terrorists, saying that it is fulfilment of the country’s law.

Activists of the Pakistan People’s Party light candles to pay homage to the victims of the Dec. 16 Taliban attack on the Army Public School and College in Peshawar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that the hanging of two terrorists on Dec. 19 was a victory for the law. “The government has finally done justice with the terrorists,” he told IPS, adding that all Taliban militants should be given same punishment because they deserve to be brought to justice. “The hanging of terrorists has fulfilled the requirement of the law of the land,” said Musharraf.

Sunni Chief Tehreek Sarwat Ijaz Qadri welcomed the hanging of terrorists and said that ultimately law had taken its course and this would go a long way towards establishing peace in the country. “It is a first step towards peace and the people have taken a sigh of relief,” he told IPS.

Jamaat-i-Islami Secretary-General Liaquat Baloch said murderers, terrorists and enemies of humanity do not deserve any concession and the law of the land calls for the execution of their death sentence after completion of trial and other legal formalities. Implementation of the death sentence will create a sense of respect and sanctity of law in society, he added.

Mian Iftikhar Husain, leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) also welcomed the hanging of terrorists and termed it a victory of the people. “The government should hang all terrorists without a distinction of bad and good Taliban,” he said, adding that the ANP believes in non-violence and is staunchly opposed to terrorism.

Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) leader Farooq Sattar said that terrorists deserve no mercy because they are killers of humanity. “The people welcome their hanging as these terrorists are responsible for creating lawlessness,” he said, pointing out that the MQM has always been at the forefront in condemning terrorists and will support any move aimed at eliminating terrorism.

Pakistan has 8000 condemned prisoners who have been awaiting the death penalty since 2008. Seventeen of them, mostly terrorists, will be executed in the next seven days.

Three convicted terrorists from the extremist group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LeJ) were handed down death sentences in 2004 and the executions were scheduled for Aug. 20, 21 and 22, 2013, but were deferred at the last moment.

Attaullah Khan was given the death sentence in six cases by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi on Jul. 6, 2004, while Mohammad Azam received the death sentence in four cases from the same court on Aug. 21. Another militant, Jalal Shah, was given the death sentence for related offences.

However, the executions were not carried out due to fear of the Taliban who had warned the government that there would be severe repercussions if it went ahead with execution of its men.

Meanwhile, Griffiths of Amnesty International warned that “the sheer number of people whose lives are at risk and the current atmosphere in Pakistan makes the situation even more alarming. The government must immediately halt any plans to carry out further executions and reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Victims of a May 17 explosion at a mosque in a village in Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which killed 13 people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Peshawar is breathing a little easier. Prime minister designate Nawaz Sharif’s offer of talks with the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has rekindled hope for peace in this Pakistan border town.

The TTP have had a long run of terror in Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, of which Peshawar is the capital. And the terror had intensified in the run-up to the May 11 elections in the country, as bomb and suicide attacks left a bloody trail of political casualties in the region.

Tackling terrorism, therefore, would have been the foremost priority of any government that came to power. And when the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) emerged the winner, the mandate before it was clear.

Sharif’s statement that “talking to Taliban was not a bad option” has sent a wave of relief among the residents of KP, and of FATA in particular, which has borne the brunt of the militancy since 2001.

Especially as the TTP has responded favourably. Its spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan welcomed the offer and considered it a positive sign. “We are devising a strategy over the course of action to be taken in response to the peace talk offer,” he said.

Terrorism is the number one problem the new government needs to solve if it is to put Pakistan on the path to progress, PML-N activist Rehmanullah Khan told IPS. “We have lost 49,000 people, including 5,000 soldiers, to the Taliban since 2005,” he said.

Other parties too have endorsed this initiative. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), under the leadership of former cricket legend Imran Khan, had, in fact, been at the forefront of a campaign to hold a dialogue with the militants.

The party will now be forming a government in coalition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has appointed Pervez Khan Khattak as the chief minister.

“We are according top priority to the establishment of peace and ending terrorism,” he told IPS. Without stopping terrorism, he said, there can be no prospect of social and economic development.

“The army has been engaged in a military operation in FATA since 2005,” Khattak added. “But the outcome has been zero and the TTP is still calling the shots in the majority of the seven tribal districts under FATA.”

If you have not been able to eliminate them by force in the last eight years, he said, talks would be your best option.

Regarding Sharif’s offer of the olive branch to the Taliban, Dr Said Akram at the political science department of the University of Peshawar told IPS that the Taliban had in March this year offered to talk with the government. “But the then government (led by the Pakistan People’s Party) did not show an interest, due to which no headway was made,” he said.

At that time, the TTP had also asked Nawaz Sharif, who was then in the opposition, as well as religious leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Syed Munawar Hassan of the Jamaat-e-Islami, for guarantees before the dialogue.

“While in opposition, Nawaz didn’t become the guarantor, but now that he is in government and prime minister, it would be his first priority to start negotiations with the TTP,” said Akram.

Both the PML-N and PTI have also sought the help of Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of JUI’s other faction, and patron-in-chief of Pakistan’s biggest Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, to facilitate talks between the government and the TTP.

The influential cleric is referred to as the ‘Father of the Taliban’. “Most of the Taliban leaders are my students,” Haq told IPS. “I have been in contact with the Taliban leadership and the response has been positive.”

But he needed the full guarantee not only of the PML-N and PTI but also of Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, he said, before launching a formal dialogue process with the TTP.

“We are sure that peace will prevail if the government, opposition, army and the Taliban display sincerity,” he said.

Muhammad Aslam Khan, a Pakistan Studies teacher at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, 50 km northeast of Peshawar, says it’s the brightest chance for the government to rein in the TTP. “The government needs to take the peace offer seriously if it wants to have peace in the future,” he said.

In fact, the people had voted for the PML-N and PTI precisely because of the failure of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami League Party (ANP) to maintain peace, Khan added. They saw hope in the former’s slogans of peace and would be very disappointed if they too failed to contain terrorism.

However, even the ANP, which had been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last five years and on a collision course with the TTP, having lost 800 of its leaders and workers in sustained attacks by the group, is in favour of making peace with them. “We want peace at any cost and will support the government because people have become sick of terrorism,” ANP spokesman Zahid Khan told IPS. Peace, it would seem, finally has a chance in Pakistan.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Dec 28 2012 (IPS)

As the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches, Pakistan must reckon with its patchy progress on maternal and child health.

About 20,000 women die due to pregnancy-related complications in Pakistan every year, while 3.2 million children under five years of age die of diarrhoea and pneumonia every year, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Six hundred Pakistani children per 100,000 live births die before reaching their fifth birthday. Diarrhoea and pneumonia account for 76 of those deaths per 100.000 live births, or 11 percent and 13 percent of childhood deaths in Pakistan, respectively.

What’s more, the polio virus continues to plague Pakistan — particularly the northern provinces, which face the added burden of the Taliban’s militancy.

In Peshawar City, in Northern Pakistan, donors and former supporters have turned their backs on the Taliban this Ramadan. Credit: AShfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 20 2012 (IPS)

For the past five years Sharifullah Shah, a local doctor from the conflict-ridden North Waziristan province in Pakistan, has handed over 500 dollars to the Taliban during the month of Ramadan. But this year, he is putting his money straight into the Edhi Welfare Centre, where he knows it will reach those in need.

“I know the (Centre) uses this money to educate and care for orphaned local children, while the Taliban insurgents just pump my money into their violent actions,” Shah told IPS, adding that his donations to the Taliban were tantamount to “aiding terrorism”.

Across Taliban-controlled areas in Pakistan, former supporters are turning their backs on the group, angered by the unrelenting violence.

“We have been giving 2.5 percent of our earnings in Zakat to the Taliban for the past 10 years because we wanted our money to be spent in the service of Allah but this year we stopped because the Taliban killed people in terrorist attacks using our money,” Umar Gul, a cloth-merchant in old Peshawar city, told IPS.

A regular and generous donor to the Taliban, Gul now wishes he had never made those contributions.

At the end of 2001, when U.S.-led coalition forces toppled the government in neighbouring Afghanistan, people swarmed the donation camps, established by religious parties on behalf of the Taliban, because they held the latter in high esteem, believing them to be defenders of Islam.

“Now, they (Taliban) have become kidnappers, extortionists and killers of humanity,” Gul stressed.

A local prayer leader told IPS that the Taliban had once been a primary recipient of the huge charitable donations made during Ramadan.

Now, with the group refusing to cease hostilities even out of respect for the holy month, people are more and more reluctant to loosen their purse strings in the service of violence.

“We, the Muslims, are of the firm belief that the month of Ramadan brings a plethora of blessings for human beings and those who resort to killing and injuring during this time have no relation to Islam,” he said.

“My followers used to hand more than 1000 dollars to a jihadist group working under the umbrella of Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) every Ramadan but they have plainly refused to pay them donations anymore,” he added.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, spokesman of the Awami National Party government in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, whose only son was killed by militants in July 2010, echoed these sentiments.

“Islam preaches brotherhood and peace while the Taliban are doing exactly the opposite. We (requested) the Taliban to desist from militancy during Ramadan but all such pleas fell on deaf ears,” he lamented.

With donations slowing to a trickle, Taliban militants have resorted to bank robberies and kidnapping for ransom, he added.

On Jul. 21, the Dawn newspaper quoted a Punjab province police officer, Raja Tahir, as saying that a gang of dacoit involved in bank robberies funded the Taliban.

“We have traced 34 robbers belonging to Kohat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is involved in funding the Taliban,” he said.

Shopkeepers in Peshawar city told IPS they have noticed a sharp increase in donations to local charity organisations.

“Nowadays we have to empty the donation box for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Trust every day. Before Ramadan it used to take three day to fill up,” Imran Ali, a manager at the Imperial Stores in Peshawar Cantonment, told IPS.

He said many commercial establishments no longer allow donation boxes for the Taliban to be placed in their stores because “the Taliban have become synonymous with terrorism”.

Maulana Muhammad Sattar, a religious scholar and former Taliban sympathiser, believes the most deplorable part of the Taliban’s savagery is the pride they take in every act of terrorism.

He recalled the attack on a school bus in Peshawar last October that killed three school children and wounded 10 others, for which the Taliban quickly claimed responsibility.

“Acts such as killing little children are simply inhuman and no sane person on the earth will approve of them,” he said.  By crossing this line, the Taliban has significantly watered down its own support base.

On Sunday, even prayer leaders condemned the Taliban and told people that donating to the group was not a service to Islam or humanity.

“We should think before making donations because the Taliban have now adopted the path of terrorism and giving charity money to them is not appropriate,” Maulvi Tabriz Khan announced at an Eid sermon in Board Colony, Peshawar, on Sunday.

He informed his congregation that Pakistan had a huge number of philanthropists but the money was wasted in the hands of the Taliban.

He added that the Taliban had now become the worst enemies of humanity and donations would only make them stronger.

“The people donating to them will not receive Allah’s blessing but rather face the Divine’s wrath,” he said.

(END)