Dhaka, Sept. 21 -- Ripa Sultana had never felt the need to collect her daughter from school. Their home is close to Badda Girls' High School in Dhaka, where Saima Tabassum is an eighth-grader.

Usually, the teenager could make the short journey between school and home without her mother worrying too much.

That changed this week.

Ripa was waiting outside the school gate to take her daughter home, driven there less by necessity than by an unease she could not shake.

"I was really worried today, so I came to pick her up," she said. "She left home in the morning angry and without eating. There is so much insecurity and uncertainty around us. She is growing up, and now I'm constantly thinking about what happened on the road? Who did she spe...