Virginia Episcopalian Magazine Spring 2013 Issue | Page 12

Face
of Terror

The Rev. Bill Sachs and Buck Blanchard

On a bright winter afternoon a few students gather
in the college theater to rehearse an upcoming
performance. They will offer Shakespeare’s “Julius
Caesar” to the campus and the public. Several
scenes require polish. A young man and young
woman begin the dialogue between Portia and
Brutus hesitantly. Finding confidence, they recite
historic lines energetically. Other students and the
faculty advisors applaud as they conclude.
It is a classic college scene, the theater situated beside a
lawn boxed by other facilities. Inside and out, students rush
between classes and activities. There is warm chatter and
frequent laughter. Strikingly they wear green blazers and
white shirts, many sporting ties with the college crest. Apart
from required attire, this could be an American campus.
Indeed most conversation, like class instruction, is in English.

But this is not North America or Europe. Edwardes
College sits in the heart of Peshawar, Pakistan, the city of
3 million that is the epicenter of terrorism. Kabul,
Afghanistan is 144 miles to the west; in between is intensely
contested terrain.

Close by, in the city of Mardan, the burned ruins
of a church recall mobs that protested a video insulting
the Prophet Muhammad last September. Farther to the
northeast, 100 miles away, there is Abbottabad, where
American Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Peshawar is the center of terror and the war on it.
Violence is a constant reality. On December 17, militants
brazenly launched a multi-phase attack on Peshawar’s
international airport that was repulsed by government
forces. Since then, there have been various attacks on
individuals and shootouts with police in the city.

Students commuting to campus pass through multiple
checkpoints featuring roadblocks with sandbagged machinegun posts. At campus gates, armed guards check identities
and patrol the surrounding walls. Edwardes sits in the midst
of ongoing threat.
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Virginia Episcopalian / Spring 2013

The authors (the Rev. Bill Sachs, center, and Buck Blanchard, right)
with the rector of All Saints’ Church in the old city of Peshawar.

Yet on campus, life seems disconnected from the
realities around it. The legacy of the past is vivid. Founded
in 1900 by British missionaries, the college continues as one
of the educational and medical institutions of the Church
of Pakistan. The colonial past is gone, but the original
intention of offering higher YX