KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: Militants last week broke into the home of an Afghan headmaster and beheaded him while forcing his wife and eight children to watch, the latest in a spate of attacks attributed to the Taliban that have forced many schools to close.
The insurgents claim that educating girls is against Islam and oppose government-funded schools for boys because they teach subjects besides religion.
Four armed men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib, 45, eight times before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in the town of Qalat late Tuesday, according to provincial government spokesman Ali Khail and a cousin of the victim, Dr. Esanullah.
Habib was slain after he refused to go with the militants to meet their commander, said Esanullah, who like many Afghans uses one name.
Habib was the headmaster and a teacher at Shaikh Mathi Baba high school, attended by 1.300 boys and girls. It is located in Zabul, a remote mountainous province populated mainly by Pashtuns and bordering Pakistan that is a hotbed of Taliban militancy.
Zabul Provinces education director, Nabi Khushal, blamed the Taliban for the killing, saying the insurgents have put up posters around Qalat demanding that schools for girls be closed and threatening to kill teachers.
– Only the Taliban are against girls being educated. ‘The Taliban often attack our teachers and beat them. But this is the first time one has been killed in this province, he said.
Esanullah said Habib resumed his more then 20-year teaching career two years ago, after the Taliban threatened him while he was working for a group helping the disabled. Since then, the Taliban told him twice to stop teaching.
Dozens of schools have been attacked and burned since US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 for sheltering terror leader Osama bin Laden.
Most of the attacks have come at night and not caused fatalities, but in October, gunmen shot and killed another headmaster in front of his students at a boys school in Kandahar Province, the former stronghold of the Taliban regime.
Before the Taliban were forced from power, they prohibited girls from attending school and forced boys to study only Islam – part of their drive to establish what they considered a ”pure” Islamic state.
Cleric Sayed Omer Munib, a member of Afghanistans top Islamic council, said there was nothing in Islam that prevents girls from studying. – ‘Nowhere in the Koran does it say that girls do not have the right to education. ‘It says that “people should be educated”. This means girls, too, he noted.
Though hundreds of thousands of children have returned to school, many have not. There are some 1,2 million primary school-age girls alone who are not being educated, according to the UN.
Khushal said 100 of Zabul Provinces 170 registered schools have closed over the past two to three years because of security fears, mostly in outlying districts. Of Zabuls 35.000 students, only 2.700 are girls, he said.
Kilde: The Push Journal
