Her instructor was smiling, too.

“These ladies are better shots than some of our men,” said Abdul Latif, a police firearms instructor. “They learned to handle a gun in just two days. Their confidence level is remarkable.”

Dangerous times call for unusual measures in northwestern Pakistan, where the police are offering firearms instruction to schoolteachers and university lecturers since the Taliban massacred 150 people at a Peshawar school in December.

Ms. Bibi was one of eight lecturers from the Frontier College for Women, a postgraduate college, who attended a two-day firearms course at the provincial police firing range last week.

“The December 16 tragedy showed us that we need to learn to be able to take care of ourselves and our students,” said Naheed Hussain, an assistant professor, who took the course while still wearing her black teaching robe. “We will not replace our pens with guns. But the situation could arise where we are required to serve our country.”

The initiative for the gun lessons comes from the provincial government and the police authorities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as part of a push to increase security at schools. The province has borne the brunt of Pakistani Taliban attacks over the years.

Gun ownership is common across northwestern Pakistan, which is largely populated by ethnic Pashtuns and includes the restive tribal districts. But the advent of armed teachers has made uneasy many parents, who say

it is the responsibility of the state, and not teachers, to protect schools and universities.

The notion of armed female teachers, in particular, has provoked consternation across conservative Pashtun society, raising a storm of protest that officials say could call the entire plan into doubt.

“How can we teach with a gun in one hand and a book in another?” asked Malik Khalid Khan, president of the All Primary Schools Teachers Association.

Abaseen Yusufzai, head of the Pashto department at Islamic College University, said, “This is the stupidest and most illogical thing that has happened in Pashtun society in living memory.”

(nytimes.com)