IV. Al-Shabaab Attacks on Schools , Teachers, and Students

Schools have featured heavily in al-Shabaab’s combat operations as well their attempt to control Somalis’ everyday activities. The group has literally turned schools into battlegrounds, using them as places from which to fire on AMISOM and TFG forces, intentionally placing students and teachers in harm’s way from return fire, and in some cases directly attacking students and education buildings. It has used schools to recruit students and teachers as fighters and to abduct girls for rape and forced marriage. It has aggressively interfered with teaching, prohibiting English and other subjects deemed contrary to their version of Islam, threatening and at times killing teachers, using classroom lectures on jihad to recruit students into their forces, replacing teachers with their own members, and imposing harsh and unwelcome Islamic restrictions on girls’ dress and interactions with male students. Classes have been left bereft of educational content, teachers have fled, and, where schools have not shut down entirely, children—deprived of any meaningful education and afraid for their safety—have dropped out in large numbers.

Many schools in Mogadishu have been destroyed or closed. A handful of schools—along with teachers and a number of pupils—have relocated, for example to El Ashabiya, in order to escape the fighting in Mogadishu, but even there have come under threat. The teaching profession has been decimated as many teachers have fled the country. This section focuses on attacks on students, teacher, and schools in 2010 and 2011.

Under international humanitarian law (the laws of war), all civilians, including students and teachers, are protected from attack.[191] Acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.[192] The laws of war also forbid attacks directed at civilian objects, including schools, except and only for such time as they are being used by warring parties for military purposes.[193] Using students and teachers as “human shields”—the deliberate use of civilians to protect one’s forces against attacks—is a war crime.[194] Return fire in such situations may violate the prohibitions against indiscriminate attacks or attacks that cause disproportionate civilian harm.[195]

The Story of a Teacher Forced to Flee Somalia “Al-Shabaab has killed teachers, threatened teachers, and taken students,” a geography, mathematics, and Arabic teacher from Medina, Mogadishu, told Human Rights Watch.[196] In December 2009, six al-Shabaab fighters came to this teacher’s class: I was teaching … a geography lesson and they told me, “We warned you not to teach these subjects.” They took a bayonet and stabbed me in the right upper lip…. They did it in front of the students.… They picked a female teacher as she was not wearing a hijab [headscarf]. They came to her class and said, “Why don’t you have a hijab and veil?” They took her in a Toyota vehicle and her body was found … near the mosque. The teacher changed schools after that, but things did not improve. He said that in the first months of 2010, “I had students who were killed for practicing English as they were walking home. They were between 10 and 17 years old. An al-Shabaab fighter asked, ‘Are you speaking English…. You don’t want to be Muslim?’ He then shot them.” In late 2010, al-Shabaab “came to the school and picked 20 students between 15 and 17 years…. They took 3 girls—a 12-year-old and two 14-year-olds. No one tried to stop them … it was impossible.” They continued coming to the school after that, he said: When al-Shabaab came into the school, children would start jumping from windows. Some would end up with broken arms and legs and teeth as a result. The windows were high and they would scramble over the lockers to try and jump out, others would pull others down trying to escape. One day al-Shabaab stopped a child from jumping by pulling his legs and he fell and lost all of his front teeth…he was nine, unconscious. At that time, al-Shabaab started “to influence the curriculum. They said English could not be taught. They said besides Arabic and religious subjects everything else was banned.” By that point, he said, “I always wondered if I would come home at the end of the day.” The teacher arrived as a refugee in Kenya in May 2011. “What forced me to leave was that the deputy and headmaster were shot. They were killed because they refused to follow instructions and stop teaching certain subjects. This is what forced me to flee.”

Laws-of-War Violations Involving Schools

Al-Shabaab has deliberately attacked students, teachers, and education buildings.[197] It has also has used school grounds to launch artillery attacks on opposing forces, sometimes with students and teachers still inside, drawing return fire from TFG and AMISOM forces. Such attacks have resulted in the damage and destruction of school buildings, the death of students in or near school compounds, and the closure of schools. In some instances, al-Shabaab has used schools for weapons training and weapons’ storage and has taken over school buildings after their closure.

On October 4, 2011, a car bomb exploded outside a compound housing several government ministries, including the Ministry of Education, at the strategic junction of Km4 (Kilometer 4) in Mogadishu. At least 100 people died and 90 were wounded. Many of the casualties were students and their parents awaiting exam results and students seeking scholarships abroad.[198] Al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamed Raghe claimed responsibility for the attack, warned civilians to stay away from TFG institutions, and threatened further attacks. Bashar Abdullahi Nur, the suicide bomber, taped an interview before the attack that was later aired on a militant-run radio station. “Now those who live abroad are taken to a college and never think about the hereafter. They never think about the harassed Muslims," he said. "He wakes up in the morning, goes to college and studies and accepts what the infidels tell him, while infidels are massacring Muslims."[199] The attack echoed al-Shabaab’s suicide bombing of a medical school graduation ceremony in Mogadishu that killed at least 19 people in 2009.

Several students told Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab deliberately attacked their school buildings in 2010 and 2011.

Ibrahim K., 14, said that in late 2010 he was on his way to school in Baidoa, in south-central Somalia, when he saw al-Shabaab fighters driving towards the school. “I ran to my class and told people to run,” he told Human Rights Watch. “There were many [fighters], planning to come to classes and take away teachers and students. When students shouted and some ran away, then al-Shabaab shelled [the school with four shells] … from the vehicle.” Ibrahim said he “saw the bodies of his teachers.”[200]

Khorfa S., 16, said that al-Shabaab shelled his school in Mogadishu during the 2010 Ramadan offensive. “I think they were targeting my school,” he explained. “Why else would they continually attack the school? In one incident one of the neighboring classrooms was shelled…. Sometimes you would hear reprisals from the TFG but they would fire beyond the school.”[201]

Daahir J., 15, told Human Rights Watch that he believed a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside his primary school around the same time:

There was a big explosion in one classroom in my school. The explosion killed my 13-year-old brother…. I think it was a suicide bomber. Not only there was no sound before the explosion and generally when something is launched you hear some sort of movement and whistling but also it affected just one room, which is not always the case with artillery fire…. We don’t know who detonated the bomb as everyone in the classroom died.[202]

Another 14-year-old boy said that al-Shabaab “placed mines at the school gate” after the school refused to allow the group to recruit there, including just before Ramadan in 2009, when TFG forces were expected to pass. It was not clear whether the mines were directed at the TFG or the school but, either way, a mine exploded while “students were exiting the school at break time.” Sixteen students died from the explosion, he said, including four of his classmates, ranging in age from 10 to 21.[203]

It was not possible to corroborate these accounts as there is no systematic monitoring and reporting of attacks on schools in Mogadishu. But direct attacks aside, equally terrifying and more common in witness accounts is al-Shabaab’s practice of trapping students and teachers as human shields inside schools and firing on TFG/AMISOM forces from within or from just behind schools, while frightened children and adults held in the school await return fire. “They use the school as a shield,” said one Mogadishu teacher. “They stand outside the school and fire, and then the fighters just melt into the school as students.”[204]

An older student described what happened at his primary school:

In November 2010 on a Sunday at around 4 p.m., my school was hit one day after fighting broke out. Al-Shabaab started firing from just behind my school compound—just behind the back of the classes. They were firing I think towards Villa Somalia. There had been sporadic fighting in the area for some time. Al-Shabaab were firing artillery that seemed to be rockets. Often foreign fighters are manning these weapons. I was in class when I started hearing the fighting and firing from al-Shabaab. I ran outside. After al-Shabaab fires, we generally run away as we know that AMISOM replies….

AMISOM/TFG started responding…. The school was hit by a weapon that sounded like a thunder when coming and then made a big explosion. The reprisal hit an empty classroom. A lot of the pupils were outside of the classrooms. The debris and shrapnel from the explosion hit some children who were outside in the compound fetching water. Three children were killed in this incident and six were injured….

My school was shut down after this. [Another] school was also shut down soon after, after it was hit in fighting.[205]

An 18-year-old student from Hawlwadag, Mogadishu, related another incident from October 2010:

One day al-Shabaab entered the school and went up to the first floor. They were shooting big guns from the school…. 15 to 20 al-Shabaab entered the first floor and fired. They closed the door and we stayed in the class. We were locked in from 10 or 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.—there was continuous fighting. We heard return fire but it did not hit the school, it hit all around us.[206]

Another Mogadishu student, age 18, described what happened in his school during Ramadan 2010:

Al-Shabaab came into the compound of the school and told us to stay in class. It was noon and they set up a Hobiye [a surface to air rocket launcher] and they started launching from inside the school compound. They set it up in the “playing” area…. Some students tried to get out of the compound but they were turned back by al-Shabaab. We were trapped for two hours and they were firing in the direction of K-4 [TFG/AMISOM-held territory]. There was incoming fire coming back at our direction. There were five rockets hitting around the school compound. One landed as we were released and it killed eight students who were walking home. They came in a series of four rockets. The students killed were 17, 16, 18, and 19 years old.[207]

Another student said al-Shabaab held him and his classmates in the school compound in Al Baraka, Mogadishu, for a whole day during Ramadan 2010: “We were told to sit. We were there from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. They were firing rockets at the TFG. The TFG returned fire and it landed outside the school compound…. We found limbs and blood in the school compound after. There were about 200 al-Shabaab fighters in the compound. This happened several times. The school was only separated by a road from AMISOM.”[208]

A teacher from Mogadishu said that at his school, al-Shabaab forces:

would make a shelter when the students were inside. When they would fire a mortar, they would get retaliated against.

One time they brought a big gun into the school. I tried to tell them not to fire their mortar from here because the reply will kill us. They refused. I asked them to let the students go. They accepted and we ran away. They launched as we were running away. They fired five or six mortars, took their gun and left. There was a reply. Two classes were damaged, burned by the response. The tables and chairs were burned and the walls destroyed.[209]

Other students described similar incidents in 2010 and 2009.[210] According to the UN secretary-general’s report on Somalia, attacks on school buildings have increased since late 2008.[211]

Several other students who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that their schools were damaged and students and teachers were wounded or killed from artillery and small arms fire.[212]

Two students said that al-Shabaab raised the group’s white flag over their schools,[213] and others said the group stored weapons there, which were used among other things for training students,[214] effectively making the school a military target that puts students at grave risk. One student said that at his school al-Shabaab “had hand grenades, guns, and pistols. The school had a big compound and they hid things in bushes and trees and behind books and lockers. Teachers knew but could not say anything.”[215]

When al-Shabaab use of schools and generalized fighting have shut schools down, al-Shabaab has on occasion taken over the buildings, making it impossible for school to resume there and placing the structures at further risk of being damaged or destroyed. The older student whose primary school was shut down (in addition to other schools) after being hit in November 2010, said: “Al-Shabaab took several of these schools as bases afterwards, including Imman Shafiiri and Somalia Youth League school.”[216] A boy who dropped out in August 2010 said by January 2011, al-Shabaab had occupied the school: “When I came back I went to the school to see it and it was an al-Shabaab zone. I saw their vehicles—technicals—there. There was no more learning. I saw my classmate there who had become part of al-Shabaab. I saw him outside the school and he told me they were staying the school compound day and night.”[217] The UN secretary-general reported that armed groups occupied at least 34 schools from early 2008 to early 2010.[218]

While it is not a violation of the laws of war for military forces to occupy buildings in a manner that does not put civilians at risk, the prolonged closure of schools without adequate alternative facilities is a violation of the students’ right to education under international human rights law.[219]

Recruitment of Children from Schools

I was always worried when they were at school. You always worried when the day ended to see if your boy was recruited or your girl was kidnapped. Every day you get your child back at the end you are thankful. Every day there were incidents reported from the school.

—Maandiq R. (not her real name), mother whose 17-year-old daughter was taken by al-Shabaab during a school tea break in Bakara, Mogadishu

Al-Shabaab has used schools to recruit boys and girls, both by subjecting them to organizational propaganda and by force, as detailed above. “They target schools as they see them as recruiting grounds, but also because they see school and education as a waste of time,” said 16-year-old Khorfa. “‘Why go to school when you could be fighting?’ is their view.”[220] Of the 23 children Human Rights Watch interviewed who were recruited or abducted by al-Shabaab in 2010 and 2011, 14 were taken from their schools or en route. Twenty-four other students told us that al-Shabaab took children from their schools or on the way during this same time period.

The methodical manner in which al-Shabaab has used schools as recruiting grounds was recounted with meticulous detail by many of the students interviewed. They reported that al-Shabaab regularly visited schools and forcibly removed children individually, often at gunpoint, from classrooms. On other occasions, they lined up students and faculty en masse in the school compound and selected children they deem fit to serve as fighters, suicide bombers, wives, or for domestic duties who they then take back to their training camps. Witnesses to these sweeps on schools said that the students had little to no chance of refusing without the risk of being beaten or killed.

Xarid M.’s description of how al-Shabaab took children from school was typical:

We would see al-Shabaab coming and try and save ourselves. We would disappear through any opening in the classroom. Once it caused a stampede. Some children would fall from the windows and others would jump and fall on others. There were many injuries from those trying to escape.

They would come to class and look at the ones who were the right age to fight.... They would beat and whip the students and force them to go. They came in looking angry and saying, “You think this is the last battle? Why are you youth sitting in class and not trying to help?”

No one could challenge them. They brought BMs, RPGs [rocket propelled grenades], and AK-47s and demonstrated them.[221]

Deka R., 13, told Human Rights Watch what happened at her primary school in Hamar Jabjab, Mogadishu:

I was in class three. Al-Shabaab came with a vehicle and they knocked at the door and we opened and they came in. They said, “We want this boy, this girl.” The teacher just kept quiet. The children followed them. There were two men with wrapped heads, uniforms, different colors but a lot of green. They took two boys and three girls who never came back....

The next day I didn’t go to school because I was afraid of al-Shabaab. I never went back to school after that.[222]

Like Deka, many other children said they dropped out because al-Shabaab was forcibly recruiting students from school. “When the recruitment started in school, the classes shrunk,” said 15-year-old Waberi B. of his school in El Ashabiya. “In my class there were 40 students, and when I left there were only 13 and no girls. There were no girls in the whole school by December 2010.[223]

Abuses against Teachers

Al-Shabaab has forcibly recruited teachers, and threatened and killed those who try to dissuade children from joining the group or who teach English and other prohibited subjects. Women teachers have faced additional threats and violence to stop them from teaching as part of al-Shabaab’s efforts to ban women from working in public places.

Teachers have faced intense pressure to join al-Shabaab. Faaid J., who taught English and mathematics at secondary schools in Mogadishu and then in El Ashabiya, said that al-Shabaab singled out teachers: “For us teachers they were calling us to join, especially on Friday. On Friday they would say, ‘You teachers have to join.’ Many times they talked with me personally. I felt very afraid—I was afraid of assassination.” Faaid said he believed he would be killed because he had already seen “several people killed after al-Shabaab came several times and called them to join them.”[224] Faaid fled to Kenya in January 2011.

Al-Shabaab tried to recruit Lebna M. in Kismayo throughout 2010. When he refused, he said al-Shabaab sent him a message through a relative that if he did not work with them, he would “pay with his life.” “They started intimidating me on the phone every day,” he told us. In December 2010, al-Shabaab members arrested him at his school and detained him. They accused him of being “an infidel who refuses to fight for Islam” and an informer, placing a knife at his neck and threatening to behead him, and interrogated him while plunging him in and out of the sea. After 25 days captivity he was able to escape and flee to Kenya.[225]

Wehliye D. said al-Shabaab forcibly recruited him with all the students in his duqsi in Buale in October 2010. Al-Shabaab members whipped him in front of his students, he said, and assigned him to cook in a training camp. After some 80 days, he escaped. Wehliye showed us scars on his neck consistent with whipping.[226]

Abdu A., a secondary school teacher, said that in December 2009, al-Shabaab fighters who were “very young boys” stopped and threatened him multiple times in Baidoa. “Leave English, stop working with foreign organizations, join our cause,” one ordered him. “From that day I decided to stop my job in the school and planned how to leave.”[227]

Human Rights Watch also interviewed five students who said al-Shabaab had recruited teachers by force from their schools.[228] Two girls said they witnessed al-Shabaab members with wrapped faces, dressed in black “Pakistani clothes” take all of their teachers—approximately 10 men—from their school in 2010.[229] Dawo G. described what she saw and heard:

Al-Shabaab came in a full vehicle. They came upstairs and called everyone down.... They said, “Come and be part of jihad.” They told the teachers, “We will take the students or we will take you.” The teachers said, “Instead of taking the Somali children, it is better you take us.”... Then they took the teachers and the school was closed.[230]

In addition to their own recruitment, teachers who try to protect their students have faced threats and violence. A visibly traumatized secondary school teacher from Mogadishu told Human Rights Watch that in September 2009 al-Shabaab shot his wife because he urged students not to join them and to stay in school. “I saw that day after day I was losing one, two, three students,” he said.

I told my students not to join these fucking groups. I said, “You are a student.” Then those guys called me and said I had to stop telling these children not to go to jihad. I said, “I don’t interfere with private lives. I just tell my students not to go.” They gave me a last warning, I refused. They tried to kill me and shot my pregnant wife. She delivered the baby dead after 15 days. She died.[231]

Waberi B. said he saw his Arabic and science teacher shot for trying to stop al-Shabaab from taking a classmate in 2010:

My 13-year-old friend was in my class. When al-Shabaab tried to take him to the camp, he said he was the only son of his mother. They said he would be killed before he could even explain. They hit him with a gun butt and forced him out of the class. The teacher intervened and al-Shabaab said he was the one telling the kids not to come. They then shot him in front of our class.[232]

Teachers have also been threatened and killed for teaching subjects that al-Shabaab objects to. Labaan M., 12, told us al-Shabaab killed his father in mid-2010 for teaching English: “English is just a normal language and they just killed him. He complained several times that he was threatened to stop teaching English.... He was killed at the school gate, just as he walked out.”[233]

Salaal M. said an al-Shabaab commander in Mogadishu threatened him in February 2010 for teaching culture and music to primary level students, subjects the commander said were “not important.” The commander said, “If you continue to teach, then don’t blame me if there are consequences.” Salaal told us that al-Shabaab also ordered the school management and other teachers to stop teaching certain subjects, including physical education. But al-Shabaab took the science teacher and “beheaded him.” According to the teacher, “They brought the head back to the neighborhood and put it in the street so people could see.”[234]

Although fewer women than men were teaching in Somalia even before the rise of al-Shabaab, al-Shabaab has specifically targeted female teachers in order to stop them from working. Ummi N., who, as mentioned below, al-Shabaab whipped for teaching biology, explained that al-Shabaab said “there could be no female teachers.” She said that at her school in 2009, “there were seven female teachers and six of them ran away.”[235] She, and another teacher, Qamar R., also said al-Shabaab threatened them and told them to stop teaching.[236]

Ishaar C., who attended primary school in Mogadishu until he left in March 2011, said that he had female teachers before 2010 but then al-Shabaab came to the school: “They said, ‘You are supposed to be in your house, not teaching, so don’t come here again.’ Al-Shabaab came for two days and said that, and then they [the female teachers] stopped.”[237] Ishaar said simply, “there were no female teachers because it was not allowed.”[238] Ibitsaam, 17, told us that al-Shabaab took all three female teachers from her school to cook for them in late 2010.[239]

Human Rights Watch spoke to a woman from Mogadishu who persisted in teaching until October of 2011. She said she taught first aid part time, and in February 2010, four armed al-Shabaab members came to her house and told her to stop teaching. “They said a woman should not come out and be teaching.... I said I would leave and they left.” However, she did not stop and they returned in October. “I was sitting outside my house cooking,” she explained.

They entered my compound and said, “Are you the person who was meant to stop teaching?” Then one started to kick me in my back, and another kicked the fire where I was cooking. I screamed and cried. They kicked a pot of boiling water, and it splashed and burned me. My husband came running out from the house. They shot him.... I ran…. I left him bleeding. I ran away and hid in a bush and then I went into labor because of the stress. My mother came looking for me and found me…. [and helped me] deliver.[240]

Taliso R. said she fled to Kenya in March 2011 “because I got a threat, an anonymous call. They said I was the only female teacher. In Islam I was not meant to work. They said, ‘If you continue you will see the consequences.’ They said they would kill me, so I came with my daughter.”[241]

Control of Curriculum and Restrictions on Girls

Al-Shabaab has aggressively interfered with the content of the education provided in the schools in areas under its control, banning English and certain other subjects, replacing courses with lectures on jihad, war, and weapons handling to promote recruitment, and imposing arduous and unwelcome restrictions on girls’ dress and interactions with male students. Al-Shabaab’s interference in the schools beyond its more direct assaults on students and teachers has deprived children of their right to education.

In accordance with its strict interpretation of Islam, al-Shabaab has banned English in schools, both language instruction and subjects taught in English, associating the language with “foreigners,” “the West,” and “the enemy.” As related above, al-Shabaab has threatened and killed teachers of English and other “Western” subjects for politically motivated reasons.

A secondary school teacher told us he “faced problems from al-Shabaab” because he taught English: “They said, ‘You have to stop the children from learning English. This is a Western language, and you have to encourage the children to do jihad, to fight’…. Finally I said, ‘I cannot do this,’ and I went to a safe place [Kenya].”[242] Another teacher told us that after al-Shabaab repeatedly threatened his life at school for teaching English: “With a few teachers, we went to the al-Shabaab administrative offices—the sort of district office—in Belet Weyne to protest. But they told us that the decision had come from the head of al-Shabaab.”[243]

Many of the students who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that al-Shabaab banned English in their schools; many of these said the group regularly monitored their classrooms to ensure it was not taught.[244]

Forbidding English carries a greater cost to students in Somalia than simply losing the opportunity to study the language: many schools use an English-based curriculum, alternate books are in short supply, and students may not understand and speak Arabic well enough to make an abrupt switch. The secondary school teacher explained why banning English “has a huge impact on children’s education”: “Most books we have are written in English. We use the Kenyan curriculum because we don’t have a Somali curriculum.”[245] Many of the students we interviewed said that their education was now limited to Arabic, religious studies, and, in some instances, mathematics.[246]

A teacher from al-Shabaab-controlled Kismayo said:

Mostly this generation has been taught in the Kenyan system. Some can’t write Arabic or Somali, only English…. [W]hen they told me to change to Arabic, I found it difficult because I don’t know how to translate to Arabic…. When we were using English books, I lectured from memory. Then if the students asked a question, I’d check the book and immediately hide it.[247]

Iskinder P., 15, said al-Shabaab stopped English from being taught at his school in 2010: “By the time I left, we only studied Arabic and religion.... We were confused because without English everything we were learning was stopped and we were learning only Arabic. We couldn’t cope with the lessons.”[248]

Some students and teachers said that al-Shabaab banned science entirely, either because it was taught in English or to prevent discussion of the human body. “I taught science and biology and that was forbidden,” Ummi N., a teacher, explained. “I was drawing ovaries and the reproductive system and talking about twins and they told me to kneel and they whipped me.”[249] A young man from Mogadishu who studied as an older student in primary school said that, “Al-Shabaab stopped us learning science because it was about reproductive health. They said it was unreligious, no male or female organs. School was useless, not to learn English or science.”[250]

Others said they were allowed to continue some aspects of science but, according to a teacher from Mogadishu, “Nothing on the human body…. So, no reproductive health. You had to miss those chapters and they said it was indecent.”[251]

In the place of banned subjects, al-Shabaab, in some schools in areas under their control, introduced their version of religious teaching, with an emphasis on jihad and even weapons training, sometimes bringing in their own instructors. Two students who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that al-Shabaab fighters gave them weapons training at school. Baashi M., who was an over-age student in class five, said that al-Shabaab regularly required children ages 12 to over 20 to attend such classes at school:

They asked teachers to go to the staff room and not to interfere. We were given a strip of black cloth to tie around our heads and then shown the videos. They also brought weapons and explosives. They would come with weapons and powder and give demonstrations on how to make explosives and how many people they could kill. They were Arabs and Pakistanis and Iraqis and Kenyans. They spoke some Arabic and some Swahili, and there was a Somali interpreter.[252]

Various other students and teachers described al-Shabaab coming into their classrooms and preaching about jihad as described above.

Al-Shabaab has placed harsh, religion-based restrictions on schoolgirls. Where they have not ordered them to stay home altogether, al-Shabaab has determined their dress, in some cases even beating girls for wearing the school uniform, and urged them to marry fighters. Although girls and boys already typically sat separately in the classroom, al-Shabaab has also forced some schools to establish separate classes for girls, further stressing already overstretched schools.[253]

Some students and teachers told Human Rights Watch that al-Shabaab told the girls in their schools not to attend school at all. Farxiyo A. said that in 2010, masked, armed al-Shabaab fighters came to her school in Mogadishu three days in a row: “[They] said that what we were learning was not based on religion and that girls should not be learning with boys…. They warned us that the girls should not be seen in the school again and wrote down our names.”[254] Abrihet N., 15, said that groups of around 30 al-Shabaab members came regularly to her primary school in Mogadishu: “They would round up the girls in the school—from ages 14 to 20—and tell us that we should not be in school.” She said that in January 2011, “They spoke to the girls in the school and told us, ‘You are now big girls so you are not supposed to be in school anymore. We will marry you off.’”[255]

Many students and teachers said that al-Shabaab ordered girl students to wear thick, uncomfortable clothing and beat them when they did not. A 17-year-old former student from Lower Juba said he saw al-Shabaab beat his classmates: “Al-Shabaab came to school and beat the ones who wore the school uniform. They beat them with sticks.”[256] Two teachers and other students, including a 13-year-old girl, also said that al-Shabaab forced girls to wear thick, heavy clothes.[257] Al-Shabaab “assembled all the girls in front of everyone and female teachers as well,” said one teacher. “They were searching with a stick to see if they had bras. If they found a bra, they would cut it with a pair of scissors and humiliate the women and girls.”[258] A few boys also said that boys were threatened or whipped for having long hair or wearing long pants.[259]

Impact of Attacks on Students and Teachers

Many students dropped out [because of al-Shabaab recruitment]. Others dropped out because the subjects were cut. At the time I left there were no girls attending the school…. Al-Shabaab were coming to school and taking the boys.... My grandmother said, “You should not go to school.” Because many children in my neighborhood were taken and she was afraid.... I stopped school six months before I came here.

—Erasto M. (not his real name), 14-year-old boy who said his hope for the future was “not to go back to Somalia,” June 2, 2011

The various forms of attacks targeting students, teachers, and schools in Somalia have severely damaged children’s ability to get an education. Although it is not possible to isolate the effect of targeted attacks from the general violence and conflict that deeply impairs education in Somalia, students and teachers often point to targeted attacks as the primary reason they left school, with girls and women often leaving more quickly but all deeply affected. Schools themselves have been displaced or closed. For students who struggle to continue, the quality of their education is severely eroded. The lingering effects of traumatic experiences can continue to hurt children’s ability to get an education even when they reach relative safety outside Somalia, when they associate schools with violence or simply fear leaving their homes.

Teachers, parents, and students all told Human Rights Watch that teachers fled following recruitment, threats, and targeted killings. For example, a young man who attended primary school in Mogadishu until September 2010 said that most of his teachers left after al-Shabaab threatened them, recruited students at the school, and launched a military attack from school grounds: “We only had Arabic and Somali and Islamic religion at the end. The teachers for English and science left.”[260] Baashi M. said that at his school in Baidoa, “Around January or February 2010, all the teachers ran away. We were left with one teacher who could just give one lesson.”[261]

Students and teachers described dramatic drops in attendance. For example:

• A primary school in Mogadishu dropped from 800 students in December 2009 to 200 students in February 2010, following the presence of al-Shabaab at the school.[262]
• Another school in Mogadishu dropped from around 550 students in early 2010 to around 20 to 30 students in November 2010, when the school closed after being hit by AMISOM/TFG return fire.[263]
• A school in Jamaame, Lower Juba, dropped from 100 to 200 students per grade to 25 to 35 students per grade, following al-Shabaab’s forced recruitment of boys and interference with the curriculum.[264]

Children who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that girls typically dropped out more quickly than boys when al-Shabaab became active in schools, even when girls were not specifically targeted for recruitment, rape, or forced marriage. Hakim A., from Jamaame, Lower Juba, said that he dropped out around Ramadan 2010 when al-Shabaab tried to recruit him, but his sister dropped out at least a year earlier, “immediately after al-Shabaab started coming to school in 2009. My mother said she should stop. When I left Somalia there were no girls left in my school.”[265] Older girls dropped out of their schools all at once following abductions and recruitment.[266] Atirsa T. said that she and all the other girls in her class dropped out around Ramadan 2010 when al-Shabaab took some 20 of her 60 classmates—girls and boys.[267] Other children and parents described similar scenarios of girls dropping out.[268]

Many of the students and teachers we interviewed said that they were still deeply affected by their experiences in Somalia, including attacks on schools. Labaan M., 12, who lost classmates when his school was bombed and whose father was killed for teaching English, told Human Rights Watch: “I felt so afraid from the situation. Even now I’m being haunted by what happened.... My father was killed by al-Shabaab. My mother refused to come to Kenya.... I miss my mother and I’m thinking of my colleagues who were killed in the school. Life is so horrible.”[269]

Some Somali refugee children in Kenya told Human Rights Watch that they were still afraid to go to school because they associated schools with attacks. Others remained in hiding, afraid that al-Shabaab might recruit them even in Kenya if they ventured out to school. Girmer S., 18, who saw his teacher beheaded by al-Shabaab in his Mogadishu school compound in 2008 for challenging the group’s attempt to recruit students, told us:

I never went back to school again after this as I was afraid of school.... I am not going to school in Kenya either as I fear school. The main reason why my parents encouraged me to come here was that they hoped it would help me forget what I had seen. I am living with a relative here; she is encouraging me to go to school but I don’t want to. I don’t have the heart to go to school. I cannot explain my fear, but I just keep remembering the teacher whom I loved so much.[270]

Sixteen-year-old Khorfa S., who said his school in Suuqa Xoola, Mogadishu, was shelled and that al-Shabaab shot and killed several students while trying to recruit them, said: “I do not feel safe here in Dadaab [refugee camp in Kenya], and I am scared to go to school. I fear schools because of what happened in my school.”[271]

Recruitment, killings, and the flight of teachers and students have contributed to schools shutting down altogether. A young man whose 13- and 14-year-old brothers were taken by al-Shabaab in July 2010 from the school where they all studied told Human Rights Watch: “The secondary school closed because teachers were killed and many children kidnapped. Most parents sent their children to Kenya.”[272] According to a 15-year-old boy who attended a private school in El Ashabiya before fleeing to Kenya in early 2011: “As the number of children being recruited increased, school enrolment was greatly affected, and so the school was closed.”[273] And the mother of three school-age girls told us: “In Medina [Mogadishu] … before 2009 there were 50 duqsis but now all of them have closed and all of the teachers have run away.... We were afraid al-Shabaab would take our children so we stopped sending them.”[274] According to the UN secretary-general’s report, 52 schools were closed in Mogadishu as of March 2010.[275]

When children manage to stay in school, fewer teachers, fewer subjects, and psychological stress damage the quality of education they receive; this, in turn, can cause students and their parents to calculate that the security risk is not worth the benefit of attending. For example, Baashi M. said by the time his school closed in April 2010, fewer than 40 students were attending, “and even those didn’t come every day,” so the teachers combined all the students, regardless of level, into a single class.[276]

This obviously has an impact on students’ achievement. Amadayo D. explained why he had only reached class four by age 16:

I kept failing the exam so I repeated several classes. The main factor was the teacher. For the whole term there was only one teacher. Most teachers ran away so we couldn’t complete the syllabus in full but we were tested on all. Even teachers are human beings and they had to leave to come to Kenya. Considering the situation, you don’t have a guarantee that the teacher will be there.[277]