The Crucial Events of a Stabbing and Exploding School Student: Maryam’s Journey to Rome, a World Without Mosaic Explosions

Another 21-year-old, Maryam, is intimately familiar with the dangers of pursuing education as a woman. She remembers being evacuated while bullets were flying over our heads while she was a high school student.

After this tragic event, the visuals editor of the story went to Rome to see a demonstration by Afghans.

A week after a suicide bomber killed 53 students in Kabul’s predominantly Hazara ethnic neighborhood, an Afghan friend sent me a poster via WhatsApp promoting a protest against attacks on Hazaras — largely Shia Muslims who have historically been persecuted by Sunni militant groups.

The protest was very emotional and intense. A woman hit the ground after a white smoke flare was set off. They were training for the suicide bombing. A woman sobbed into her child’s hair. Everywhere I looked, I saw tears. It was heartbreaking.

I noticed two men holding a large poster with pictures of the young women who were killed in the suicide bombing, and I recognized two of the faces right away: Marzia and her best friend and cousin, Hajar.

Just a few days before, I was reviewing photos of the girls sent to us by Marzia’s family. I pulled the story up on my phone and showed it to the men holding up the poster. The man in the blue sweater paused and said, “I was their teacher.”

They wanted the principal to show them the footage from the classrooms and the cameras in the school for security reasons. The principal agreed.

What did he do in Afghanistan when the Taliban took control of the country? An Afghan father’s story in the daykundi province

That’s when the Taliban men saw one of Hussaini’s lectures. He was a math teacher but had degrees in economics and business management. He made a point about how worse the economy was since the Taliban banned women from getting an education and from working.

The Taliban wanted to know where Hussaini was. The teacher was warned by the principal. He ignored the text because he was in the classroom. The principal encouraged him to leave as soon as possible.

He stopped teaching, abruptly ended his class and fled through a back door. He went home and left Kabul the next day. He took refuge in Afghanistan’s Daykundi Province, which is far from the capital and has a majority of ethnic Hazaras.

The last time he saw Marzia and Hajar was the day he abruptly left school. The two young women had come in to pick up books to study at home because the Taliban didn’t allow them to attend school anymore — that’s how much they wanted to keep learning.

He remembered something the girls said to him at a local event known as Teachers Day. It was October of 2020. “We are going to make your face white,” Marzia and Hajar told him.

It was a saying I’d not heard before. It’s a phrase that’s used in Afghanistan, explained Hussaini. It means they were going to make him proud with all of their future accomplishments.

I asked what he hopes for his own future. He said he went to school in Afghanistan. I have many memories from my time in Kabul. It is hard to get food and lodging in another country. My main dream is that one day the Taliban will be removed from Afghanistan, and I’ll go back and teach the young women in my school.”

The Ministry of Higher Education issued an order suspending women from attending centers of higher education until further notice. The Taliban didn’t reply to many requests to explain the move.

The Taliban had already taken control of the country in August 2021, and on Tuesday they decided to impose harsher restrictions on the rights of Afghan women.

The Taliban were overthrown in 2001 by the U.S.-led coalition, which kept Osama bin Laden and then returned to power after the US left last year.

Lifting the Taliban Ban on Women and Girls in Higher Education: Report to the Ministry of Higher Education, Nangarhar, Ethiopia, April 21-23

The decision was made at a government meeting. A letter shared by the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Ziaullah Hashmi, told private and public universities to implement the ban as soon as possible and to inform the ministry once the ban is in place.

The lifting of the Taliban ban on women and girls looking for education is a key point of contention in discussions with the international community.

“I can’t fulfill my dreams, my hopes. Everything is disappearing before my eyes and I can’t do anything about it,” said a third-year journalism and communication student at Nangarhar University. She didn’t want to be known for fear of reprisals.

“Is being a girl a crime? If that’s the case, I wish I wasn’t a girl,” she added. “My father had dreams for me, that his daughter would become a talented journalist in the future. That is now destroyed. How will a person feel in this situation?

“God willing, I will continue my studies in any way. I’m starting online studies. And, if it doesn’t work, I will have to leave the country and go to another country,” she said.

“It’s difficult to imagine how a country can develop, can deal with all of the challenges that it has, without the active participation of women and the education,” Guterres said.

The UN resolution of the UN human rights problem: the Taliban’s ban on girls from higher education is still inferred from the Kabul UN Report on the 11th March

Robert Wood told the UN that the Taliban can’t expect to be a member of the international community until they respect the rights of all Afghans.

The Taliban’s request to represent Afghanistan at the United Nations has been turned down once more, despite the fact that the previous government still holds the seat.

Afghanistan’s charge d’affairs Naseer Ahmed Faiq said at the U.N. that the announcement “marks a new low in violation of most fundamental and universal human rights for all of humanity.”

A spokesman for the ministry of higher education, Ziaullah Hashmi confirmed the news to NPR and tweeted out the announcement himself with the words “important news.”

“What news could be worse than this?” said Zahra in a voice message to NPR, left in response to a question about how she felt. She requested that her family name not be used because she was going to be identified by the Taliban. I have been shaking with anger. I can’t even cry.”

Girls can’t return to secondary schools in March because of some of its most striking restrictions. CNN reported that many students and their families had dashed their dreams of becoming teachers, doctors or engineers as a result of the move.

Taliban officials have since given an array of pretexts for the continued ban, from wanting to review the girls’ curriculum to discussions over their uniforms.

But because of a quirk in the decision-making process, women were still allowed to attend university, albeit with strict conditions: They had to cover their hair and faces at all times, wear long, loose black robes and abide by strict gender segregation. It is not clear how many women were still attending university.

What does the Taliban’s recent ban on women’s education tell us about Afghan society and its implication for the Afghan government and the international community

He believes that certain Taliban officials spread the rumor, hoping it would trigger international pressure that would “be enough reason for the leadership to reconsider such a ban.”

“I genuinely think that the man in charge thinks that this is what an Islamic society ought to look like,” says Obaidullah Baheer, a Kabul-based lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan. Speaking earlier to NPR about Akhundzada, he said, “he had this very specific view of where women or young girls should be within the society, which is within their households. So I guess for all intents and purposes, this is a gender apartheid. This is nothing short of that.”

The Taliban’s move quickly triggered reactions from the international community, which has refused to recognize the Islamic group’s takeover of Afghanistan.

“Education is a basic human right,” it added. “Excluding women and girls from secondary and tertiary education not only denies them this right, it denies Afghan society as a whole the benefit of the contributions that women and girls have to offer. It denies all of Afghanistan a future.

The Taliban Security Forces: A Threat to Future Engineers in an Afghanistan with Ultra-Conservative Status, according to a Female Minister of Higher Education

Now, she said, “everything is over for me. I only wanted to be educated, to be a good person in my community, and to be an engineer. I can’t do that anymore. Life means nothing for me.”

But there are mixed signals. In a message sent to school principals on the messaging service WhatsApp, one ministry of education official said the “mujahideen” or Taliban security forces, who ordered female employees to go home had acted on a “misunderstanding.”

The move was expected – and dreaded – by observers as the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Haibutullah Akhundzada imposes his vision of an Afghanistan which is ultra-conservative, even by the hardline group’s standards.

Women can attend universities under strict conditions, despite the fact that former minister of higher education Abdul Baqi Haqqani allowed women to do so. Nida Mohammad Nadim replaced Haqqani due to his opposition to women getting an education. He is also close to Akhundzada.

Another woman who runs three free-of-charge tuition centers for high school-aged girls said she was waiting for Taliban education officials to rule on whether she could keep operating.

The U.S. envoy who broke the Taliban’s return to power, or how the Taliban abused their power: An Afghan woman told her daughter

In broken English, Mohammadi said, “I don’t sleep.” She said she would defend their interests after all the girls called. Then, she burst into tears.

He said female students were disrespectful of the Taliban’s modesty rules, which demand a full black face veil, headscarf and long loose robe. He was annoyed that women dressed like they were going to weddings.

Zalmay Khalilzad was the U.S. envoy who brokered the return to power of the Taliban through an agreement with Washington. It enraged Afghans on Twitter. It even appeared to rouse the ire of former senior diplomats.

NATO’s last senior civilian representative to Afghanistan Jawed Ludin, a former Afghanistan diplomat, was surprised by the many people who were shocked. What did you think would happen? Really?

The Educated Female Students of Afghanistan: An Example of Gender Apartheid and the Past, Present, and Future of the Country

She said that it was a terrible scene. The girls were crying and asking the guards to let them in, but they wouldn’t have to do anything about it.

It has stripped away hardwon freedom from the girls and women it has fought so hard for over the last twenty years despite repeated claims that it would protect their rights.

She said she always believed that they could overcome their sorrow and fear by getting educated. “However, this (time) is different. It’s not acceptable and unbelievable.

The former Afghan President called the Taliban illegitimate rulers who were holding the entire population hostage.

The issue of women’s education and work in the country is a sad and cruel example of gender apartheid in the 21st century. I have said it time and time again that if one girl becomes literate, she changes five future generations and if she is not literate, she will destroy five future generations.

Hamid Karzai, who was the Afghan president, expressed deep regret over the suspension. The country’s growth, population and self-sufficiency depends on the education of every child, girl, and boy in this land.

Other foreign officials and leaders issued similar statements, including the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price, and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karen Decker.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/asia/taliban-bans-female-students-afghanistan-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html

Maryam Kaaj, the last refugee of a school shooting in Afghanistan, remembers how many people have died in a suicide attack

It was the UN mission in Afghanistan that said that preventing half of the population from contributing to society will have a devastating impact on the entire country.

At least 25 people were killed in a suicide bombing at an education center in Afghanistan in September, most of which were young women. The attack sparked public outrage and horror, with dozens of women taking to the streets of Kabul afterward in protest.

Maryam, who is being identified by one name as her security, just missed a blast. She ran back into her classroom and found her friends scattered around her.

She said each brush with death made her strive to pursue her own ambitions and to relive the memories of her best friends who died before her eyes.

Though she was accepted into a bachelors program weeks after the September bombing, she decided to defer her university plans for a year, instead returning to rebuild the destroyed education center from scratch. She wanted to encourage other girls to continue their educations, she said.

I am lost. I don’t know what to do and what to say,” she told CNN. “Since last night, I have been imagining every friend of mine who lost their lives in the Kaaj attack. What was their sacrifice for?”

She didn’t teach her sisters Islam, but she did teach them the Qur’an – a reminder of the pressure of the Taliban to return to school

But there were women employees in schools across Kabul – including teachers, principals and other administrators – who were marking exams and undertaking routine administrative tasks.

“We don’t have anywhere to go to ask for an explanation,” she said – because women are not welcome in many Taliban-run government ministries. “Now we just have to accept what comes. You can’t think of a reason.

She told NPR that she was concerned she would be in trouble if she taught about Islam to girls. She requested anonymity because of her fear of being identified. “This is my main source of income,” she said. “I’ll have to secretly teach girls the Qur’an.”

The images were striking because the Afghan men have noticeably been absent from the protests supporting their sisters’ right to education. Taliban forces cracked down on men who resisted the group much harder, as many Afghans note.

And in the first public statement by the Minister of Higher Education since the ban on women attending higher education was issued, Sheikh Neda Mohammad Nadeem insisted that the move was temporary, blaming the female students for their own predicament.

He said the Afghan government was “working on solving issues within the framework of Islamic law.” The same government has insisted for over a year that they are working to resolve issues that keep girls out of high school.

The minister didn’t mention that female teachers were kicked out of their schools or that girls can’t stay in primary schools. Parents, teachers and the girls themselves are left unaware of what’s in the future without a comment addressing these concerns.