Footprints: Heroes and villains

THEY struck again. They attacked our students and teachers, yet again. This time at a university founded in the name of a leader who was a great advocate of peace. The Bacha Khan University in Charsadda is placed amid green sugarcane fields and villages with strong tribal traditions. It is spreading the light of knowledge in an area where many children don’t go to school.

 

The university’s grand main gate and name engraved in bold, gold letters on the front wall painted red displays the acceptance of modern education by the deeply conservative Pakhtun society. But Pashtunwali’s peaceful traditions have been badly mauled by bloodthirsty militants spawned by years of a dangerous state policy that brought home international wars and endorsed deadly proxies.

The campus is not very vast. It is the size of a conventional government college. The whole institution is protected by a boundary wall some three metres in height with barbed wire on top.

Yet, the militants managed to penetrate the premises taking advantage of the foggy conditions that fateful Wednesday morning, as well as of the sanctuaries in this area which our security forces don’t appear to have located.

They were four. They were hiding in the area. They planned it very well. They came early in the morning, used the sugarcane fields as their shield, and chose a safe place to intrude into — behind a family quarter in the university.

First, they tried to sneak in by breaking a grille protecting the ground sewer at the back of the boundary wall, just behind the quarters of a university staff member. They partially broke it, but failed to enter the campus because of the narrow space. Then, one of them climbed over the wall, cut the barbed wire and jumped in. He put an iron-frame bed against the wall to help his partners.

For more detail   Footprints: Heroes and villains

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