Recently, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai mentioned that the lack of educational facilities and attacks by Taliban have kept five million school going children out of schools. Additionally, Presidengt pleaded with insurgents to stop such attacks. Some of the factors that were restricting children to go to school were economic hardships and lack of facilities in their areas, fear of parents for the attacks from the Taliban or fear of schools being burnt down by the militants, he added.
The attacks on schools reached their highest level in 2009, with more than 600 incidents recorded, according to a recent United Nations report. Today there are nearly eight million children, including 40 percent girls, attending in around 13,500 schools, Afghan Education Minister Mohammad Farooq Wardak said in the same gathering. That number is up from around one million students – only boys – that attended in more than 3,000schools in early 2002.
