Pakistani schools destroyed in the ‘Valley of Beards’.

Charred blackboards, splintered desks and chairs crushed beneath concrete rubble are all that remain of the Geyal girls’ school.

One night last week a group of radical Islamists stole into the remote Darel valley and blew up the three-room schoolhouse and tried to burn down four other schools in the area.

“I was given a warning by the mullahs and the mujahideen, ‘Today we destroy your school. Tomorrow we will destroy your home,’ ” said Abdul Gafar, 27, the school’s teacher.

No one was injured in the attack but it was the first of its kind in Pakistan. Over the course of the next five days four more primary schools were blown up or set alight, two in the nearby town of Chilas.

Four of the damaged schools were for girls and five were for boys. All of them were funded by the World Bank and run by a Pakistani non-governmental organisation called the Social Action Programme.

The message of the attacks was clear: the education of girls and foreign-funded schools would not be tolerated.