Voices: Defiance in the face of terror

The Urdu teacher was dying. Tied to a chair, the Taliban militants who took over her school in a remote northern outpost of Pakistan cut her hair. Then they set her on fire.

"We are not scared of you," she screamed at her murderers as the flames caught her clothing. "We will defeat you!"

That was an eyewitness account told to us by a 12th-grader who was at the Army Public School in Peshawar on Tuesday, when 132 children and 14 teachers died after six militants stormed the building. As my reporting team sifted through the interviews we did with students, parents, friends and relatives, something struck me as remarkable: the defiance.

Usually in the aftermath of such attacks on schools, there is shock. Fear. Bewilderment. Sadness. Mourning. In Peshawar the morning after, there was that, too. The city went quiet as schools, markets and small businesses stayed closed, and the usually dusty, chaotic streets of this northern outpost were deserted.

"There is a silence in city — no jokes, no laughter, even at home no one is talking with each other — I haven't seen anything like this before," Abdur Rehman Afridi, 22, a student of business administration at the Institute of Management Sciences in Peshawar told us. "We just see each other, greet, have dinner and are off to our bedrooms. I haven't talked to anyone since yesterday."

Even my reporters were shellshocked. Naila Inayat, reporting from Lahore, Pakistan, wrote: "I can't sleep, I keep thinking about what those parents are going through." For Shereena Qazi, who had lived in Peshawar but is now in Doha, Qatar, it hit closer to home. She lost two relatives in that attack, including a lively and ambitious, much loved cousin, Afaq. He was 16.

Attacks on schools are not unusual: According to the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, there were 9,600 assaults mounted against schools across 70 countries killing hundreds of students over the past five years.

Still, after having covered the terrible situation for students in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Gaza, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have noticed a pattern: a certain defiance by students and their teachers in the face of unspeakable tragedy and unbelievable danger. An unquenchable thirst for education.

In Pakistan last week, those who survived told us they won't let this attack deter them. They will honor the dead — by going to school.

Aakif Azeem, a 12th-grader, was taking a bathroom break during a chem exam in the school when he heard the gunshots. He was fired at by a Taliban gunman, ran to hide in a classroom with other students, saw his teacher set on fire and his friends shot in the face.

"I lost a lot of friends … their faces were shot by those animals," he told us. "I saw bodies of friends and my teachers. … I saw blood everywhere, and I saw them set my teacher's body on fire — I cannot ever forget these images."

But he won't back down, he says.

"No matter what happens, I will definitely go back to school — even right now, I'm ready to wear my school uniform and go back there where my friends, mentors and teachers were killed. Who do they think they are messing with? I am not going to give up."

Sound familiar? It reminds me of our reporting on the most famous student in the world, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 at age 15 for her activism on behalf of female students — the militants don't believe girls should be educated. She was determined to get schooling before she was shot. Afterward, she didn't change her mind.

Many female students at her school, in her region, Swat Valley, which was held by the Taliban from 2007 to 2009, and across the country were just as resolute, we found while interviewing them.

My team has also talked to Syrian and Iraqi students who actually sneak back across front lines into war zones to take their exams.

Still, with students, it's usually a quiet defiance. In Afghanistan, I encountered female students in Taliban-held areas who were studying in secret schools held in homes. They slink around to study, until the Taliban leadership come to town — from Pakistan — when the schools close.

It's infuriating they have to hide this way. But that they are so set on learning is remarkable.

Batti is managing editor of Associated Reporters Abroad. Contributing: Naila Inayat and Shereena Qazi.