NAIK NAM, Afghanistan -- Saher Gul was chalking a long division lesson on the blackboard of his two-room village school. Twenty-five boys, ages 9 to 19, were sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor. Suddenly the earthen walls and ceiling exploded and collapsed, smothering the class in a mountain of rubble.
Sher Mahmad was chatting with friends in the dusty village square when he heard the explosion. He sprinted toward the school, he said, where his son and four other young relatives were studying. Everyone dug frantically at the dirt, trying to reach the students before they suffocated.
"Who would do such a thing? This is against Islam, against our religious law, against all humanity," said Mahmad, a farmer in this drought-baked hamlet in Paktia province. Mahmad's son and Gul, the teacher, survived, but nine boys and a teacher died when a bomb detonated in the schoolyard last Saturday afternoon.
The circumstances of the attack remain confused, and possible motives abound. The village is remote, and news of the blast was initially obscured by a high-profile terrorist bombing last Sunday in Kabul, the capital, 90 miles north. Three Americans and at least seven Afghans were killed when a car bomb detonated outside a U.S. security company's office.
But in some ways, the bombing of the tiny Mullah Khel school was both more horrifying in its targeting of children and more alarming in its implications for Afghan society. The country, just emerging from 25 years of bloodshed and ideological tumult, is struggling to find a peaceful postwar balance between conservative tradition and modernizing progress.
The Taliban, an extremist Islamic militia that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, has claimed responsibility for the Kabul bombing and has vowed to sabotage the country's movement toward political and social change by attacking foreigners, aid projects, schools for girls, government facilities and anyone working to promote October's presidential elections.
The bombed school is located in Zurmat, a troubled district that was once a stronghold of the Taliban and where support for the Islamic militia still exists. During Taliban rule, officials said, the Mullah Khel school was a Koranic academy, or madrassa, which taught Islamic studies to boys who lived on the premises.
After the collapse of the Taliban, the school continued offering morning Islamic lessons for local boys. But two months ago, with support from a foreign-funded agency called the Afghan Primary Education Program, it added an afternoon curriculum of English, math and other subjects taught in regular public schools.
Mullah Khel did not teach girls, and there are no elementary schools for girls in the village or nearby. In the past year, suspected Taliban militants have threatened rural girls' schools and set fire to several at night, but this was the first deadly attack to occur while a school was in session.
"Those who did this want to keep Afghanistan from education, to close the doors to progress. They don't know God, they only know money and destruction," said Mohammed Hashim, the police chief in Zurmat. He described the district as a "difficult and dangerous area. It was a major Taliban base. The people may not support them but they don't support us either," he said.
A second possible motive was the school's link to the election.
In recent months, the teachers at Mullah Khel had been involved in helping men and women register to vote, and some residents speculated that this could have made it a target for extremist violence.
But Gul, 26, who was at home Tuesday recovering from minor injuries, and a variety of older community leaders said everyone in the area was enthusiastic about both the afternoon classes and the chance to participate in elections.
"I cannot imagine who would kill these innocent children. All the tribal elders supported our lessons and encouraged me to educate their sons," Gul said. "Everyone here understands the value of education. A teacher is like a candle for the community, but it can only spread light when it is lit."
