July 10, 2007 As War Enters Classrooms, Fear Grips Afghans

Photos and excerpts from article published by The New Work Times.

QALAI SAYEDAN, Afghanistan, July 9 — With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.

The staccato of machine-gun fire pelted through the stillness. A 13-year-old named Shukria was hit in the arm and the back, and then teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand. But Shukria was too heavy to lift, and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.

As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more studied aim at those they already had shot, killing Shukria with bullets to her stomach and heart. Then the attackers seemed to succumb to the frenzy they had begun, forsaking the motorbike and fleeing on foot in a panic, two bobbing heads — one tucked into a helmet, the other swaddled by a handkerchief — vanishing amid the earthen color of the wheat.

Six students were shot here on the afternoon of June 12, two of them fatally. The Qalai Sayedan School — considered among the very best in the central Afghan province of Logar — reopened only last weekend, but even with Kalashnikov-toting guards at the gate, only a quarter of the 1,600 students have dared to return.

Joao Silva for The New York Times: Afghan girls and boys waited to enter their classrooms at the Martyred Saadia School in the town of Qalai Sayedan, 40 miles south of Kabul. The school was recently renamed to honor one of two female students gunned down on June 12 on their way home from school and just reopened last weekend.

Joao Silva for The New York Times: The school in Qalai Sayedan, built four years ago by the German government, enrolls boys through grade 6 and girls through grade 12. Two years ago it was named the top school in the province. Perhaps because it is considered a model for a different kind of future, it has been attacked repeatedly.

Joao Silva for The New York Times: Zarmina, 12, who witnessed the murder of her sister Shukria last month, did not return to the school in Qalai Sayedan when it reopened last weekend. Only 25 percent of the school's students have come back so far.