Despite insurgent threats, hundreds of boys at school in Salavat, Afghanistan

<p>SALAVAT, Afghanistan – Not a single kid or teacher showed up when the unadorned eight-room school in Salavat opened to much fanfare barely a month ago.</p> <p>It was a heart-breaking moment for the Canadian military and civilian sponsors for whom education of children in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar province has long been a top, if frustrating, priority</p> <p>”The insurgents told us, ‘Don’t go to the school. If you guys go, we will cut off your ears,'” says one boy, who looks about 12.</p> <p>Still, here they are now, neatly paired – sometimes in threes – quietly seated in their wooden desks, attentively reciting a lesson or reading from the chalkboard.</p> <p>Weeks after that inauspicious start, the raucous chatter of scores of kids sporting baby blue UNICEF backpacks echoes across the dusty soccer pitch at the start of the school day.</p> <p>Each morning now, boys and teens make their way down the laneways of the town, most on foot, on bicycles or even by taxi for the first formal schooling of their lives.</p> <p>”This is the best thing that happened to me in Afghanistan in 18 months – children going to school,” a smiling Cpl. Gabriel Ferland says as he surveys the blue backpacks and eager kids.</p> <p>The Taliban have long opposed secular education, arguing it corrupts the mind.</p> <p>Countless schools, teachers and students across Afghanistan have been on the violent end of their ideological wrath.</p> <p>”We are afraid of (the Taliban),” another boy says.</p> <p>”For two days I was absent and wasn’t coming, but my father told me to go.”</p> <p>Finding teachers was another obstacle in the days following the school’s opening, as an initial trickle of students became more of a torrent.</p> <p>Don Rector, an American who has worked closely with Canadian troops in recent months to help make the school a reality, spent the first week giving lessons through an interpreter.</p> <p>Then eight teachers were recruited from Kandahar city, about 20 kilometres to the northeast.</p> <p>The young men brave the journey by taxi each day for the promise of US$130 a month plus a similar amount in danger pay – money they have yet to receive.</p> <p>”The insurgents sent letters and messages through the kids to not teach in this school,” says Saifullah, the principal who has been on the job for three weeks.</p> <p>”Of course we are afraid; every morning when we leave our compound, our family and our brothers say, ‘Don’t go: It’s dangerous.'”</p> <p>For now at least, the teachers run classes for a couple of hours each morning, before heading back to Kandahar and their own afternoon classes.</p> <p>Five of them, along with the principal, graduate next month – from Grade 12. The other three are still getting through Grade 11.</p> <p>What’s clear, Rector says, is that the Taliban’s ideological zealotry appears to be squarely off-side with many Afghans when it comes to education.</p> <p>”By sending their children to school, they are making a statement,” Rector says.</p> <p>One night a little more than a week ago, according to one knowledgeable source, insurgents called townsfolk together and read out a letter purportedly from the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.</p> <p>The letter warned against attending schools without Muslim teachers – a message interpreted as a sign the Taliban may be relenting on secular learning.</p> <p>While some boys head off to work in the mornings and all the girls mind siblings, haul water or do other chores, the children in class are clearly eager to be there.</p> <p>”Before we were working the fields with our father, but now we are coming to school and we are very happy,” one boy says.</p> <p>But the insurgent threat always lurks in the shadows.</p> <p>Looking past the wooden goalposts, which resemble hockey nets on steroids, one stares down the barrel of a machine gun mounted on a light armoured vehicle peeking over a concrete barricade.</p> <p>It’s not by coincidence the school is hard up against a small Canadian patrol base that also houses Afghan soldiers.</p> <p>A young Afghan police officer – he looks to weigh about 90 pounds soaking wet – sits forlornly in the hot sun at the school gate, a rifle of sorts slung over his shoulder.</p> <p>This is Panjwaii district, after all, and the situation, while relatively calm for now, remains precarious.</p> <p>Kill a teacher or harm a kid and the school could shut down in a heartbeat.</p> <p>Still, base commander Maj. Jean-Christian Marquis is optimistic the people of Salavat themselves will ultimately ensure the school keeps going.</p> <p>”The insurgents cannot kill everybody,” Marquis says. “They cannot threaten the entire population.”</p>