They start arriving just after dawn, their tiny frames bowed under the weight of schoolbooks as they traipse into class.
Little scarved heads bob in unison as they recite times tables and Quranic verses after their teacher.
The rigorous schedule for these 25 girls begins promptly at 8am: lessons in English, maths and Urdu followed by a lunch break at 1pm, then Islamic studies in the afternoon before they are finally given a reprieve at 5pm.
Nothing unusual in their schooling, you might think. Like millions of little girls across the world, they are simply receiving their birthright - an education.
But their presence at the Parwarish school and orphanage in Pakistan's war-ravaged Swat Valley denotes a remarkable achievement.
Two years ago, it would have been unthinkable to have a girls' school operating openly in this hotly contested spot. In January 2009, a two-year offensive by the Taliban, led by the extremist Maulana Fazlullah, succeeded in sweeping through the valley at the base of the Hindu Kush and enforcing a ban on female education on the 1.6 million residents.
Four hundred schools educating 400,000 girls immediately shut down, and of those bold enough to defy the invaders, 170 were bombed or torched.
Within the main town of Mingora alone, where Parwarish stands, 10 girls' schools were blown up. More than a million people fled their homes in terror, moving into refugee camps or in with relatives in neighbouring Afghanistan. Those who remained lived in constant fear of unwittingly flouting the Taliban's strict vice and virtue laws, punishable by beheading or public execution.
Mingora is 200km from Abbottabad, the hideout where the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed last Sunday by US special forces.
It was only when the Pakistani army drove out the militants in July 2009 that the refugees began creeping back to their homes, only to count the bitter cost of the violence. An estimated 3,500 were killed in Swat in the conflict, leaving thousands of children orphaned.
The shouts and laughter from the 25 girls and 52 boys filling Parwarish's sunlight-filled classrooms and dormitories give few clues to the heartache those children have suffered to earn a place there. And while they may not know it, they have Dubai business leaders to thank for giving them a second chance at happiness. For that little corner of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, will forever bear the stamp of the UAE.
When news of the hardships inflicted during the Taliban occupation reached the Pakistan Association Dubai (Pad), many of its 3,000-plus members came forward to help. While many have been living in the Emirates for years and are well established here, connections with the picturesque valley run deep - 60 per cent of the one million-plus Pakistani expatriates living in the UAE are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Their roots resulted in the creation of the Pak Khyber Wing under the umbrella of Pad. And as tens of thousands of dirhams poured in, it was clear the children's need was greatest.
Parwarish - meaning "nurture" - opened in November 2009 with a donation of five million rupees (Dh218,000) from Pad. Eighteen months on, it has housed and educated dozens of boys between the ages of five and 12. In February it began taking female day pupils living within a 56-kilometre radius.
"You cannot imagine how traumatised they must have been when they first came here," says Brigadier Saeed Ullah Khan. As the Pakistani army's operational commander for the neighbouring town of Barikot, he oversaw the military operation to drive out the Taliban. "You would never guess from the children's faces now what they have gone through, but to them, this place is home.
"We do not call this an orphanage, we call it a nurturing house," Khan says. "No one knows where the next bomb blast will be, where the next bullet is coming from, but thanks be to God, children are being educated again. It is all down to the Pakistan Association Dubai, which was the first group to donate money."
In the traditional tribal area, children are deemed orphans even if the mother is still alive as she has no means to support them, or even if she remarries, with a new husband unwilling to take on her offspring.
Incomplete records identified 2,213 children whose fathers had been killed, but officials feared the actual number of orphans was between 3,500 and 7,000.
Naeem Ullah, who had been working with refugees in camps through a charitable organisation, submitted a proposal for an orphanage to Pad and found an abandoned hostel to convert into a base. With the help of the association, he began compiling a list of the neediest cases.
"The criteria was children with no home, no father and a risk of getting involved in terrorist activity," says Ullah, who now is the orphanage's director. "We only have a limited number of places so we have to be harsh.
"These children are alone and abandoned with no one else to care for them," he continues. "When they come here, they are wary and worried but within a couple of weeks, they are transformed. We give them self-confidence and a tough schedule to keep them busy so they have no time to think of the past."
Dawoud Khan, 12, and his brother, Amal, six, are two such cases. They were taken in a year ago when their father, a teacher, was shot dead by the Taliban. Their poverty-stricken mother remarried and, unable to care for all four of her children, split the family and sent the two boys to Parwarish.
"I like it here," says Dawoud. "It is special to me because of my friends. I like to watch cartoons and play games. I am third or fourth in my class and study hard. I want to go into the army because it saved our country and fought for us."
He kicks a football around the playground with a couple of other boys. Their carefree joy and laughter belie the reality: they are here because their fathers were killed. But teachers recruited from graduates of Swat Public School strive to give the children as normal an upbringing as possible. Mottos adorn every wall, with messages such as "Change", "Visualise" and "You always have the choice to be positive or negative. Negative thoughts don't promote healing. Positive thoughts do".
"They have lost everything," says Ullah. "We try to give them some light in the darkness."
Swat was once dubbed the Switzerland of Pakistan, its breathtaking peaks and views drawing tens of thousands of tourists every year. Once invaded by Alexander the Great, it is littered with architectural ruins, Buddhist shrines and Hindu temples spanning a 3,000-year history. But its beauty has been scarred by more recent conflict. With Afghanistan to the west, Peshawar and the capital Islamabad to the south and on the main trade route to China, the region is a key to peace and stability in Pakistan.
In 2007 Fazlullah, the leader of Tehreek-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, a banned militant group, joined the Taliban and enforced Sharia in the valley. Backed by 4,500 armed troops, he imposed his rule in 59 villages, threatening to execute those who listened to music or who danced and barbers who shaved customers' beards.
One of his victims was Shabana, a feted Swat dancer hired for weddings. In January 2009 the Taliban dragged her at gunpoint into Mingora's Green Square, where she was shot dead. Her body was strewn with banknotes and CDs of her performances and left in the square for two days as a warning to other would-be offenders.
The following month, after a year and a half of fierce fighting with the Taliban in the valley - up to half a million fled and 1,200 were killed - the Pakistani government conceded a ceasefire. They agreed to uphold Sharia in Swat in exchange for peace. The Taliban responded by turning Mingora into a base for their rule of terror. It took three more months of combat, from May to July 2009, to bring stability to the region.
Over the three-year conflict, more than 90 per cent of Swat Valley residents were deemed internationally displaced persons.
"What happened in the name of Islam was a disgrace," says Brigadier Khan. "From May to July, there were 16 Taliban units in Swat with up to 600 men in each unit in control of a certain area. In the space of a week, we had to carry ID, schools were controlled and water supplies were cut. No man could go outside or send his children to school. Girls were not allowed out and those that risked doing so had to be fully covered in burqas. Girls were kidnapped for trying to go to school; in one incident, eight dead bodies of schoolgirls were recovered.
"We lived on dry rations of rice, flour, lentils, chilli and ghee. There was no milk or fresh fruit. Worse, it was impossible to tell who was a friend and who was a foe."
The donations from Pad were unrivalled in helping Swat get back on its feet, Khan says: "I have never seen any other association raise so much in such a short time and with so much effort."
With the upkeep of the orphanage costing about Dh6,000 a month, the commitment is long-term. The brigadier has just donated land amounting to more than 11,000 square metres so Pad can build a permanent base to oversee its operation, Parwarish's managers, meanwhile, have launched a scheme to sponsor a child for US$1,000 (Dh3,673).
And Pad was called upon again last year when devastating floods affected 14 million people in Pakistan. In Swat, dozens of vital bridges were washed away. The organisation funded the 1.3 million rupee (Dh56,500) reconstruction of a causeway linking Barikot to Shahinaghar and saved villagers a 2km trek to the other side. In a separate humanitarian gesture, the Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan bridge is being built near Barikot with funds from the UAE.
For Riaz Farooq, the president of Pad who has just completed two terms, there was no question of not helping, before and after the floods.
"These children are like my own," he says. "If we do not educate our children, then we cannot end terrorism. We might have left these villages to live abroad but we need to make them beautiful as a legacy for the children left behind. Our association slogan is 'We are Pakistanis, we are one'. It is not about Sindh, Balochistan or wherever you are from. We should be united in keeping terrorism at bay."
How to help
The charitable arm of the Pakistan Association Dubai helps migrant workers, runs medical clinics for the needy and pays student fees.
After last year's floods in Pakistan, the association sent 56 12-metre containers packed with supplies to the affected area, established a tent city in Thatta for 2,000 people washed out of their homes, and built a bridge in Barikot with a donation of 1.3 million Pakistani rupees (Dh56,598).
You can sponsor a child at Parwarish orphanage for US$1,000 (Dh3,673) a year. For more details, e-mail naeemullahswat@gmail.com or call +92 300 5749942. Donations can be made to HBL Bank in Mingora, Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, account number 02217900453103.
