Afghan students run underground book club to keep dreams alive

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On May 8 last year, Tahira who was 17 years old and her classmate was discussing their plans for the Eid al-Fitr vacation when a strong bomb exploded in their school in the Dasht-e-Barch Kabul environment. He was thrown to the other side of the road with the intensity of the explosion.

Two more explosions followed targeting Ul-Shuhada Middle School for girls and killing 90 people, most of them female students. “One day I talked to my friend. Next, I lay in the hospital, and everything is connected, “Tahira recalled.

Three pieces of pieces of bullets have crashed into his feet. “Two of them have been removed and one is part of my body,” Tahira, who did not want to express his full name, told Al Jazeera.

There is no group that claims to be responsible for a series of explosions. Environment in the West outskirts of Kabul – Home for the Dominated Shiite Hazara Community – has been the target of brutal attacks in recent years, especially by the ISIL group (ISIS). In 2020, 24 people were killed, including newborns and their mothers in attacks on the maternity ward. Isil claims to be responsible for the attack

Foreign politicians and missions in Afghanistan call it an attack on “education”, but for many students, it is an attack on their identity as young women and hazara.

A year after the family bombing was still grieving over the deaths of their children, and students who survived had not recovered from trauma.

Tahira, who is in grade 11, said the school does not have resources, but there is hope. “We have a dream, and that makes this situation be borne,” he said.

But in a few months after the explosion, when the United States troops began to withdraw after 20 years of occupation, the security situation worsened. The armed group of the Taliban seized power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of the US army triggered the collapse of the Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani.

The collapse of violence and chaotic from the previous government supported by the West ended Tahira’s education.

Immediately after power, the Taliban promised women’s rights and press freedom. But nine months since the takeover, high school for girls remains closed and public space has shrunk for Afghan women because the group has expanded the sidewalk.

On Saturday, the highest leader of the group Haabatullah Akhunzada ordered women who appeared in public to be covered from head to toe, returning memories of the Brutal Taliban government between 1996 and 2001.

A series of explosions in recent weeks, especially those targeting the Shia Hazaras, have increased the vulnerability of ethnic minorities.

These girls are the smartest of our generation; They need to be polished, “said Qassemi. “We turned on the way for them, and they found their way.”

Razia 16, which is part of the book club, find it difficult to understand the reasons for the Taliban to prevent the education of girls.

First of all, I am a human, not just a woman,” he said. Razia believe that the same opportunity must be given to men and women. “Then it all depends on the individual about how they shine with the knowledge they gained,” he said.

Razia lost 12 classmates in an explosion at Sayed’s Ul-Shuhada Middle School last year. He has been waiting to return to school, he said, not only to fulfill his dream, but to undergo the dream of his classmates as well.