The solution to ending the huge number of attacks against schools in Afghanistan can be found at the grassroots level, suggests a new report by the aid group CARE and Afghanistan's ministry of education.
The problem of organized attacks against Afghan schools is long-standing but has worsened since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Between January 2006 and December 2008 alone, there were 1,153 attacks on schools in the country that resulted in the deaths of 230 people.
The nature of the attacks vary, with some coming from organized militants using mines and rocket attacks, and others coming from gangs using crude fire bombs and even poison. Attacks can sometimes simply consist of written or verbal threats against teachers or parents planning to send their children to school.
The intent, though, is always the same: to frighten and intimidate people away from participating in government-supported education.
Now, the new report from CARE takes a look at violence against education in Afghanistan and finds the solutions need to be as varied as the attacks themselves.
Jennifer Rowell, an advocacy coordinator for CARE Canada in Afghanistan, says CARE researchers studying the school attacks found although the attacks vary by region, they noticed distinct patterns.
"By understanding those patterns in any specific local context, they enable us to make protection mechanisms that will really work for those areas," she told CTV's Canada AM Monday from Ottawa.
One of the key findings was that the location of a school greatly influences its risk of attack. For example, so-called "hub schools" that are located between three or more communities, so that children from all around can attend, are at great risk of attack.
"Often, these schools that are often in the middle of nowhere are easily attacked, because they are in the middle of nowhere. So embedding them back into the community is one very strong way to keeping them more protected," Rowell said.
Another strategy is to reduce the symbolic value of either the government or military presence in the school. That's because schools that have government signage or a PRT (provincial reconstruction team) sign seem to be at greater risk of attack, the report authors found.
"We found that by and large, government schools were attacked far more than community-based schools and parents perceived a greater risk of a school being attacked if there was a very visible presence of the government or the military at the school," Rowell said.
"So being able to provide education in a discreet way, in a way that creates trust, and in a way that reduces visibility is an excellent way of protecting kids and ensuring enrollment and attendance stays up and attacks stay down."
By "community-based education," the report authors mean education that takes place in a building that isn't a school, but is instead based in a home or other community building.
Not surprisingly, the report found that many of the attacks are on schools for girls, who have long faced hurdles in attempting to get an education in Afghanistan.
While only about 19 per cent of all schools in the country are for girls, those schools are targeted 40 per cent of the time, the report found.
"So there's an obvious deliberate attack against girls' education in Afghanistan," Rowell said.
She says it's hard enough for girls to get an education in Afghanistan, with few schools and females teachers available. Add in the threat of harm from attacks and it's no surprise that only four per cent of Afghan girls aged seven to nine years old attend school.
"If you realize there's been an attack on another school in another community and you think that might happen to your school and your child, you would consider very carefully whether you would want to send your child to school," Rowell says.
"It's a very natural thing for a parent to do."
