Corona virus: Education, protection and conquest in the mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan are extinguished

It was a very bright day on May 24, 2019, when 16-year-old Amna Hanif of Baltistan's Hoshe Valley waved a green crescent flag on Spain's highest peak, Tie Day, and saw the world in her footsteps and the sky in her hands. Another dream came to Amna's eyes that she was waving the same green flag on K2 and Mount Everest. Amna's journey was to move forward and make the dream come true, but the devastation of the corona virus has also blurred the interpretation of that dream. In the beautiful mountain valley of Bhasha in Gilgit-Baltistan, the shadow of the Corona virus, which was burning for the protection of rare animals, education of girls and conquest (mountaineering), is now being extinguished. The Baltistan Wildlife Conservation and Development Organization, a Skardu-based organization, has started educating girls in the Bhasha Valley as well as protecting snow leopards. Now there are not one or two but thousands of girls studying there and in these schools talented girls like Amna Hanif, Siddique Bano and Sadia Batool got their primary education and set foot on the difficult paths of mountaineering where successes kissed their feet and The positive face of Pakistan was exposed to the world. This beautiful story begins two decades ago when the Baltistan Wildlife Conservation and Development Organization began work on the conservation of the world's rarest animals, especially the snow leopard, in the Baltistan region. But the story took a beautiful turn when Tania Rosen, an Italian woman, arrived to review the snow leopard conservation project. Tania works on wildlife and is a member of the IUCN's Cat Specialist Group. He was told that no girl in the area goes to school and this is not because they do not want to educate girls but because of limited financial resources, boys are traditionally preferred to be sent to school. Tania immediately decided that she would do something for the education of these girls.

He started by himself, he and his ten-year-old daughter became the first donors to this work and thus began the education of 76 girls in this remote valley. According to Ghulam Muhammad, chief executive officer of the Baltistan Wildlife Conservation and Development Organization, his organization began work in 1999 to protect snow leopards in Baltistan. Gilgit-Baltistan is home to three mountain ranges, the Himalayas, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, and is home to thousands of rare and endangered animals. The foremost of these rare animals is the snow leopard, whose species is endangered. For the protection of the snow leopard, its habitat has been officially declared as Karakoram National Park so that the species can thrive safely in this uninterrupted natural environment. The Baltistan Wildlife Conservation and Development Organization was the first to work to prevent this conflict. According to Ghulam Mohammad, his organization built cattle sheds in pastures used by the local population to protect cattle from the attack of the snow leopard and the retaliatory attack of the snow leopard from humans. Even then, if an animal is killed, compensation is paid. In addition to livestock insurance, camera fixing and raising awareness of the local population about snow leopards are also part of their program.

"Despite all our efforts to protect the snow leopard, the local population joined us wholeheartedly when girls' education began here," she added. People sincerely felt that it was because of these snow leopards that the light of knowledge was spreading in their area, changing the lives of their daughters, so it was important to protect these snow leopards. In this valley, the first candle of education was Tania, and then the lamp kept burning. Tania contacted Genevieve Chibot, an educationist whose husband, Dr. Chibut, had spent many years in Azad Kashmir and Baltistan in connection with one of his studies. Dr. Chabot also had a passion for mountaineering. Insati from these hilly areas compelled them to do something for the promotion of education here and thus the couple laid the foundation of 'Aqrafund'.

In Pakistan, Pervez Sajjad is the head of Iqrafand. According to him, the purpose of this fund is to promote education in the backward villages of Gilgit-Baltistan, especially for girls. The first school was opened in Sabri Bhasha Valley and so far 15 schools have been opened in 15 villages with 4439 girls enrolled so far. In these schools, all the needs of female students such as uniforms, books, school bags etc. are also met. These schools are also a source of employment for about 74 teachers and so far about 500 teachers have been trained, including teachers from government schools.

Scholarships are also provided to children for further higher education. After completing their education, these girls also work as teachers in their area. Many of the girls attending these schools are also the first of their kind to reach school. Amna Hanif, a young climber, also received her early education at a school set up by the Iqra Fund. Later, for further education, she went to Skardu on a Iqra Fund scholarship. Amna's childhood was spent in the lap of climbers in Hoshe village.

She is the granddaughter of the famous little climber Little Cream, who has proved her mettle by successfully climbing Mount Everest, K2, Nanga Parbat and Broad Peak. A documentary has also been made on her in France.  As Little Karim's granddaughter, Amna inherited her passion for mountaineering and continued her training at home. Like her grandfather, Amna wanted to conquer the mountains and make Pakistan famous. Her first destination was the 6080-meter-high Manglisar peak in the Karakoram range in the Shamshal Valley, which she successfully climbed in 2018.

He was accompanied on the expedition by his father, grandfather and cousins, and four foreign climbers. She was only 16 at the time, so she had the honor of being the youngest girl to climb the Manglisar peak. Amna's second destination was Spain's Tied Day Peak, and she did so in 2019. On May 2, 2019, he successfully climbed Spain's highest peak (3,718 meters) Tie Day, where he not only waved the Pakistani flag but also sang a song of joy. His father, grandfather and cousin Siddique were also with him in this campaign. The two young girls also had the honor of being the first Pakistani women to top a tie. Earlier, no Pakistani female climber had tried her luck at the Tie Day peak. Tied Day is Spain's highest peak but is located on an island in the Spanish-administered Atlantic Ocean near the continent. Amna Hanif says that now her destination is K2 and Mount Everest, the highest peaks in the world, but according to the principles of mountaineering, she cannot go directly to them, so she will go to Broad Pack and Spatnik Pack first. She says that now she does not find anything difficult, she can do all this easily.

Climbing is easy for Amna, but getting sponsorship for the next expedition has become very difficult in these circumstances. They need huge amounts of sponsorship, which now seems impossible in the economic turmoil caused by the Corona virus.

Pervez Sajjad says that the corona virus has affected the world economy as well as education. Like the rest of the world, our schools are closed, children are sitting at home, but the situation in our area is different.

"There are not enough facilities in these backward villages to educate children online," he said. They have neither computers nor smartphones. "Because of the lack of TV, they cannot use the education channel launched by the Prime Minister and their parents are not educated enough to teach these children at home," he said.

"We are also paying the price for the global economic downturn," he added. Our donor agencies are closing down or their numbers are dwindling. We are also being asked to cut costs, retrench teachers but we know it will be dangerous, our ten or twelve years of hard work will be wasted. "We have managed to change the mindset of the local population with great difficulty with regard to girls' education. One of our careless decisions will jeopardize the future of thousands of girls," she said. We have eliminated all unnecessary expenses and are trying to handle the situation but it seems that everything is getting out of hand. Ghulam Mohammad says most of the Iqra Fund's donors are Muslims and foreigners. That's why we fundraise in the United States every year during the month of Ramadan and raise a good amount of money. "We also invited Amna Hanif to this fundraising event so that she too could get some sponsorship for the next campaign, but in these circumstances this program also had to be canceled. Amna also fears that if the situation continues like this, along with the end of mountaineering, the education of her and many other girls like her will also stop and this will be an irreparable loss.