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Billy Briggs on Radio Scotland

Ferret Director, Billy Briggs was on Radio Scotland talking about political violence in Pakistan. Here's a transcript of his report.

Surrounded by family at her home in Pakistan, Irum Anees wept as she talked about the last time she saw her son alive.

She said: “Hammad was in the kitchen and he blew me three kisses - and then he left for school.”

Hammad – Irum’s only son – was a pupil at the Army Public School in Peshawar, the capital city of the northwest province of Pakistan called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - and on the 16th December 2014, the teenager was murdered along with another 131 children and 18 adults, in an attack on the school by the Pakistan Taliban.

It was the deadliest terrorist act in Pakistan’s history, an atrocity that prompted outrage across the world.

The massacre started around 10.00am that day, when seven members of the Taliban – armed with automatic weapons and bombs - entered the school and began to systematically kill schoolchildren, many of whom who had gathered in its main hall for a first aid lesson.

The pupils who died were aged between 12 and 16 years old, and many were shot as they cowered terrified behind chairs in the school's auditorium.

Some were told to pray before they were killed, and a member of staff was reportedly burned alive in front of the children.

In a video released a few days later, the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for the carnage, saying it was revenge for an offensive by the Pakistani military against them in Waziristan.

The Taliban’s ranting leader – Maulana Fazlullah – warned that more schools would be targeted and said: “We will kill them in the streets, markets, everywhere.”

But this was not the first attack on a school in Pakistan. According to a report last year from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, at least 838 schools were targeted between 2009 and 2012 - and it is estimated that some 20,000 civilians have died at the hands of militants since 2003.

Indeed, my visit to Pakistan was to report on the battle against extremism and I arrived in Peshawar two weeks after the school attack, accompanied by a photographer called Angie Catlin.

We were helped by a human rights organisation called Aware Girls, which operates in the face of severe violence, not just in Peshawar but in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Aware Girls is run by two remarkably brave sisters called Gulalai and Saba Ismail, who founded the NGO in 2002, to oppose acid attacks, honour killings and violence against women.

Aware Girls has since expanded and today it has a network of some 300 peace activists who work in Taliban strongholds, to try and dissuade others from joining extremist groups and becoming suicide bombers.

They also promote education for women - but this is highly dangerous work.

For example, in 2010, Malala Yousafzai attended an Aware Girls programme in Peshawar and a year later she was shot in the head by the Taliban in Swat Valley, for advocating girls’ education.

She survived and went on to win the Nobel peace prize.

Gulalai and Saba are high profile too get constant death threats because of their work and they were once falsely denounced on television as "CIA spies".

Last spring, Gulalai had a lucky escape when lost luggage after a flight, meant she wasn't at home in Peshawar when four armed men turned up at her door.

"They claimed to be security officers who had come to search our home," Gulalai explained.

"They were shouting and making threats. They started shooting guns into the air."

She doesn't know who the gunmen were, saying they could have been Taliban or even a criminal gang trying to kidnap her for ransom.

"We cannot trust anyone," Gulalai said.

Peshawar is a dangerous place at the best of times.

A sprawling, dusty metropolis of around 3.3 million people, the city felt as if it was under siege, with armed soldiers nervously manning checkpoints and government buildings resembling fortresses, protected by guns and razor wire.

Everyone we met had been affected by terrorism including the sister of an Aware Girls employee, who was teaching in the Army Public School on the day of the Taliban attack.

Mahrukh Qayyum was teaching maths to a class of 11-year-olds and she told how children lay on the floor of the classroom for two hours until rescued by the army.

Mahrukh told me: “We were terrified as we had never faced a situation like that. The children were crying as some had older brothers in the auditorium. Some of the children fainted.”

This week, Mahrukh, Irum and Tahir - and the rest of Pakistan - were remembering all those who died on the 16th December last year.

As a mark of respect, schools were closed all over Pakistan and the Army Public School hosted a special memorial service attended by 2500 guests.

Ahead of that event, I had contacted Irum and Tahir to ask how they’d been.

Tahir said the past year had been very difficult but that their faith in God had greatly helped.

You can read more of his work on Pakistan here.