Five More Schools Destroyed in Taliban Campaign

Islamic extremists blew up five schools in north-west Pakistan yesterday, the latest targets in a Taliban campaign against education.

One hundred and eighty three government schools have now been destroyed. Last week the Taliban banned education for girls.

The latest bombings took place in the district capital, Mingora, once the safest place in Swat, a mountainous area in mainstream Pakistan, distinct from the tribal area that is an established base for the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, yesterday promised action, but the Taliban has increased its grip on the area. Women are not allowed to go shopping and the militants run a parallel system of justice, carrying out public floggings and executing "criminals" and anyone who criticizes them. During one week this month, 27 bodies were dumped overnight in a square in the center of Mingora, which has been dubbed Slaughterhouse Square.

Swat was once one of the most literate areas of the province but around 80,000 children have been left without schools, and there are doubts about whether many parents will allow their children to return to education after the winter holiday.

The government vowed over the weekend that the schools would reopen but Ziauddin Yousafzai, the former president of the Swat schools association, warned: "We will not open the schools unless total peace is restored in the whole of Swat. The Taliban is closing schools at gunpoint and the government is telling us to open them at gunpoint." Elected representatives have fled Swat and many police officers, the target of suicide bomb attacks, have deserted, with the force down in strength from 1,725 to 295.

"Things are really deteriorating," said Shaukat Yousafzai, the top state official in Swat. "The police just protect some of the main offices now. They are not fit for tackling an insurgency."

The army complains that the Awami National party stopped the military operation for two months last April while it tried to forge a peace deal with the Taliban. About 12,000 troops are deployed in Swat. "When there was a lull after the [peace] negotiations, the militants had the chance to rearm, regroup. They had a free hand against the public and terrorized them," said Major General Athar Abbas, the army's chief spokesman.