The Afghan women, especially female students in Kabul, Herat, Bamyan and Ghazni provinces took to the streets in the last three days to protests the killing of Hazara women between the aged of 18-24 in the suicide bombing.
At least 53 people, among them 46 girls and young women, were killed and another 110 wounded after a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a classroom as they took mock university entrance exams. The blast occurred in September 30.
The attack targeted Kaaj tutoring center in Dasht-e-Barchi, a western Kabul neighborhood home to the Afghan Shiite Muslim and Hazara community, which has been subjected to some worst violence in recent time.
At least 600 boys and girls students were inside the center
Survivors said there were at least 600 boys and girls, separated by a curtain as per as Taliban order, however, the girls were in front line, near the bomber.
The attack which came in the wake of several other targeting Hazara, has painted an idea which is nothing but a deliberate attack on Hazara community, calling it “Hazara genocide.”
Afghans inside the country and abroad rapidly floated in social media with Hashtag “StopHazaraGenocide” and called on the Taliban to take steps to maintain their security.
The Taliban also came under severe criticism for failing to provide security to the most persecuted Afghan minority group.
Protests in several cities
Beside domestic and international outrage, the attack had also prompted Afghan female students in several cities to stage protests.
Dozens of university students in Balkh province went on the march through the streets of the provincial capital city Mazar-e-Sharif, demanding justice for the victims.
According to social media videos, the Taliban had allegedly locked a group of women students in their dormitory to prevent them from joining the rally.
The Harici itself could not verify the authenticity of the footage that went viral showing a girl trying to break the door lock with a brick, while other girls were making a film and accused the Taliban of preventing them from joining other female protestors.
Kabul, the capital city, western Herat, Bamyan and Ghazni are the provinces where women and girls have held demonstrations since Friday by mostly Hazara women students.
Social media video again shows Taliban members are trying to disrupt protesters and fire warning shots in the air. However, some protestors said the Taliban beat them and directly fired toward them.
Demonstrators call for strengthening security of educational centers
“We came out to the streets to call on the Taliban to ensure safety of the educational centers of the Hazara community,” one of the protesters Fatima Samim told Harici.
Samim furthered that their lost hope is educational institutions, including schools and universities and called “attacking these places as a deliberate attempt by the enemies of education to prevent girls and women from education.”
Attacks on education centers are all too common, while no group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s atrocity, but a local affiliate of so-called Islamic State has taken credit for several similar attacks that killed dozens of young students.
Schools and the right to education to all have always been complicated in Afghanistan. Even with the support of billions of dollars to the past western-backed government, not all children were able to go to schools.
3.5 million Afghan children deprived of education
Even before the Taliban returned to power, 3.5 million Afghan children were deprived of going to schools. In 2017, the Human Rights Watch in a report said that 2.9 million Afghan girls were out of school and only 37 percent of teenage girls were literate. In 2020, the former government said at least 7,000 schools lacked physical buildings despite a $298 million World Bank pledge of educational assistance to the then government.
In the past 20 years, with millions of dollars being showered in Afghanistan, the large swathes of the country saw little development due to corruption and embezzlement, where even hundreds of ghost schools were built in provinces.
Taliban strongly condemned Kaaj attack
September 30 attack on the tutoring center has been widely condemned by the US, UNAMA and other countries and neighbors which amplify the need that the Taliban must bring to justice those responsible.
The Taliban foreign ministry has condemned the attack and called it the work of “malicious networks” and “a conspiracy by the enemies” of Afghanistan to create divisions among the Afghans.
“We are responsible to protect the lives of all Afghans irrespective of their ethnicity, and we don’t believe in any ethnic or religious division of the Afghan people,” Taliban foreign ministry said.
The Taliban pledged to beef up security of education centers, and already sent representatives to Hazara victim families in order to assure them of protection and to utilize every available option to prevent such incident at the future.
