In Khyber Agency, Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) -- an affiliate of the Pakistani Taliban -- recently started a unique recruitment drive, asking parents to send at least one child to an LI-affiliated madrassa or pay an amount of 400,000 rupees to get an exemption.

There have been reports that pamphlets by LI were distributed from home to home and put up in market places warning parents to comply.

But those associated with the education sector in the nearby city of Peshawar, adjacent to the areas controlled by LI, feel there is more to it than just imparting religious education.

"The parents are being threatened to send children to religious schools so as to control their minds, where they will teach them everything related to jihad and its violent interpretations. They are doing so to accomplish their mission of sending them as fighters. And that is why they are forcing children to attend seminaries," explains Azra Gul, a principal who is running a private charity school under the Baacha Khan Education Foundation since 2010 in the outskirts of Peshawar.

Gul’s school charges no fee from its 100 plus students. But she complains of reluctant parents who do not want to send their children to her school, especially since the LI edict.

"Neither do the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) nor does the tribal belt want this, but the local population here is being held hostage to these elements who want to force us away from modernisation and use us for their objectives," she adds.

Azra is currently struggling to keep attendance at her school from dropping. She does so by going door-to-door in the neighbourhood her school is based in, convincing parents that it is safe to send their children, especially girls, to school.

While charity schools as this one face a dark future, the religious seminaries in KP province and the tribal belt continue to flourish and, that too, with mostly foreign funding from Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait.

One such seminary in the Mohmand Agency of the tribal belt, around a 100 kilometre’s from Azra’s school, is a prime example of that.

The head cleric gives a tour of the seminary with its brand new marble flooring and expansion plans in sight. His brother is an imam at a local mosque in Saudi Arabia. The land has been allotted by an influential of the area and the madrassa has seen a constant rise in number of pupils since it was established in the 1990s. The management here is close to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rehman group), a religious right-wing party known for its strict interpretations of Islam.

Students here are taught to learn the Quran by heart. The madrassa students can be seen rocking back and forth in a trance-like state reading the Quran. For the head cleric, this is the only education that Muslims need today -- as the modern education system, according to him, is a source of evil.

"Government and private schools do not teach about Islam which is a problem. They focus on worldly affairs and western education. But the people of this region give more importance to religion and therefore they prefer madrassa over schools," the cleric claims.

The cleric also believes that the education system in mainstream schools is imported from the West. "It is not in line with our value system and culture and they want us to adopt their lifestyle, but that will never happen," he adds.

Resisting pressure from militants for their madrassa recruitment drive is not the only concern of the people of KP and the tribal belt. These threatening attitudes also translate into violence, if the locals try to defy them. For example, a few kilometres from this religious seminary in Mohmand is a government school that was bombed a couple of years ago. Today it still stands as a reminder, in the same condition as the night the two bombs brought it down. The classroom walls and ceilings are half torn down. Now, most children have dropped out and the few of those who come, sit on the floor next to the rubble.

For the school owner, Haji Nadir Khan, who donated land for this school, the government seems least interested in rebuilding it. He has spent the last two years pleading with different political authorities to do so but has had no luck in securing any funds for reconstruction.

He says his school is still under threat, and so he has constructed a guard post on top of one of the walls.

"The Taliban are still in the surrounding areas. They visit our village frequently too, so I hired a guard, gave him a gun and made this guard room for him to keep an eye on any suspicious activity -- because the Taliban can attack us again," he explains.

When asked why they target schools, his reply is similar to that of the madrassa head. "The Taliban blow up schools, especially girls’ schools, because they don’t believe in this education system. They mostly attack girls’ schools because they believe if girls and female teachers are allowed to work and be educated, they will spread immorality in the society," he adds.

Due to the lack of empathy from the government quarters, finding qualified teachers is also a problem. One of the teachers, Hussain, has been suffering from psychological trauma since the bombing.

"Until there is no peace in this region, we will continue to live in fear and uncertainty. We are always thinking, what will happen if someone plants a bomb again? What if they attack us this time or kidnap us? Teachers, as you may know, have been kidnapped in this area. But we teach despite such crises," he adds.

Despite the odds, the students here are brimming with optimism. Many of them dream about changing their society some day. Mehman, a student of class 5, is one such student. She says she did not come to school for the first few months after the bombing since her family did not allow it. But eventually they gave in to her demands. "I came back because I want to continue my education and become a teacher so I can give to others what I have learnt in schools," says the young student.

But with government’s lack of interest in improving the mainstream education sector, dreams of many such students may remain unfulfilled. For example in Mohmand Agency alone, where this bombed out school is located, local media reports suggest that more than 100 schools have been destroyed in the last decade, but only 12 have been rebuilt.

And with the annual spending on education being slightly over two per cent of the total federal budget, it is apparent that the government is not doing much to reverse this alarming trend of radicalisation of Pakistani youth through religious seminaries.