ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday ordered that a girls school bombed by militants this week in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban should be immediately rebuild, vowing to provide women with equal opportunities for education.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack late Wednesday that targeted the only girls school in Shawa, a town in the North Waziristan district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

Suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who have targeted girls schools in the province in the past, saying that women should not be educated.

The TTP group was evicted from northwest Pakistan’s Swat and other regions in recent years after successive military operations. The TTP are a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. The Taliban takeover in neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban, the Pakistan government says. 

“Prime Minister directed to immediately identify the people involved in the incident and ensure that they are punished,” a statement from Sharif’s office said, adding that the PM had instructed that the part of the school destroyed in the attack be “immediately” rebuilt at government expense.

“The nefarious ambitions of terrorists to stop the education of girls will never be allowed to succeed,” the statement quoted Sharif as saying. “Terrorist elements who are trying to create obstacles in the education of the daughters of the nation will be brought to justice.”

Pakistan witnessed multiple attacks on girls schools until 2019, especially in the Swat Valley and elsewhere in the northwest where the Pakistani Taliban long controlled the former tribal regions. In 2012, the insurgents attacked Malala Yousafzai, a teenage student and advocate for the education of girls who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the latest incident, police said the attackers first beat up the school guard before setting off the explosives at the private Aafia Islamic Girls Model School, which has 150 students.

In a statement, Abdullah Fadil, the UNICEF representative in Pakistan, said the “destruction of a girls’ school in a remote and underserved area is a heinous crime detrimental to national progress.” He cited Sharif’s statement on Wednesday declaring an education emergency and pledging to work toward enrolling 26 million out-of-school children.

With inputs from AP

KARACHI: Downside risks for the Pakistani economy remain exceptionally high, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday in its staff report on the country, ahead of talks with the fund on a longer term program.

An International Monetary Fund mission is expected to visit Pakistan this month to discuss a new program, ahead of Islamabad beginning its annual budget-making process for the next financial year.

“Downside risks remain exceptionally high. While the new government has indicated its intention to continue the SBA’s policies, political uncertainty remains significant,” said the fund in its staff report following the second and final review under the standby arrangement (SBA).

The fund added that political complexities and high cost of living could weigh on policy, adding that policy slippages, together with lower external financing, could undermine the narrow path to debt sustainability and place pressure on the exchange rate.

The IMF also said higher commodity prices and disruptions to shipping, or tighter global financial conditions, would also adversely affect external stability for the cash-strapped nation.

The fund stressed the need for timely post-program external financing disbursements.

Pakistan last month completed a short-term $3 billion program, which helped stave off sovereign default, but the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has stressed the need for a fresh, longer term program.

Pakistan narrowly averted default last summer, and its $350 billion economy has stabilized after the completion of the last IMF program, with inflation coming down to around 17 percent in April from a record high 38 percent last May.

It is still dealing with a high fiscal shortfall and while it has controlled its external account deficit through import control mechanisms, it has come at the expense of stagnating growth, which is expected to be around 2 percent this year compared to negative growth last year.

Pakistan is expected to seek at least $6 billion and request additional financing from the Fund under the Resilience and Sustainability Trust.