Killing Schoolgirls in Afghanistan: Fundamentalist Attackers Target Girls Leaving Kabul High School
Human Rights Watch – Scenes from Sayed ul-Shuhada High School in Kabul, Afghanistan, where as many as 85 people including many schoolgirls were killed in an attack this weekend, should break anyone’s heart. They certainly broke mine. In 2017 a filmmaker and I spent a week at the school, filming a video to accompany a report on barriers to girls’ education.
The school had difficulties providing girls an education. Girls studied outdoors, in tattered tents or the open air, and the school was desperately overcrowded. Girls lacked essential facilities such as toilets and a library, and faced hardships outside school, too. Their neighborhood is very impoverished, populated predominantly by members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority. It has increasingly been targeted for attack, including on a local maternity hospital in May 2020. Families were often unable to afford transportation and many girls walked 45 minutes or more to get there. Many worked in addition to studying, at jobs such as carpet-making and tailoring, to support their families.
But what shone through was the girls’ determination to study
no matter what. In a country where less than 30
percent of women can read, these girls bring hope for a brighter
future. They were funny and lively,
like girls anywhere, but also deadly serious about getting an education. This
makes their senseless killing so particularly devastating….
https://www.juancole.com/2021/05/schoolgirls-afghanistan-fundamentalist.html
The CIA's
Intervention in Afghanistan: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, January 1998
