December 17, Islamabad: In an announcement that left spokespersons of various terrorist organizations speechless, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar revealed that subjecting the children of terrorists to “at least 8 hours a day” of government schooling was a “central feature” of Pakistan’s new counterterrorism strategy.
He promised that the condition of public schools would remain “deplorable” until terrorists of all shades were forced into submission.
Sources close to the Interior Minister believe that the new counterterrorism policy has been formulated in response to public pressure for education as an answer to terrorism.
Master Murgha, the Executive Director of Revenge Education, an educational start-up, and other observers have lauded the Federal Government for its responsiveness to public opinion.
Explaining the unexpected policy shift, Chaudhry Nisar said that even government schoolteachers, who were paid to torment the students, couldn’t stand to be in school for more than one day a week.
He felt that “terrorist bachas” couldn’t survive in public schools because they had grown soft in the relative comfort of madrassas, which were “practically overflowing” with foreign funding. On the other hand, he added, what the average government school received by way of public money couldn’t really be called funding. “The term pocket money would be more accurate,” he said.
Reacting to the Interior Minister’s announcement, spokesperson of the banned Jaish-e-Aish, Maulana Bebsi said that he was already making arrangements for his children to hop various international borders and enter Europe in the guise of Syrian refugees. He believed that this would at least give them a “fighting chance” of making it to adulthood without being “scarred for life”.
Leader of militant outfit Lashkar-e-Dashkar, Ahmad Al-Makhni said via satellite phone that the battle ahead would be tough. However, he was confident that in the end the children of his brothers-in-arms would emerge from their time at government schools with an even greater capacity for spreading “ignorance and hate”.
