It was Friday. Schools were closed. But that day hundreds of boys and girls sat together under the roof of Kaaj education centre to test their chances for success in the entrance examination. Someone competed for engineering, another wanted to be a medical doctor. Someone wanted to be a novelist. Someone else wanted to be an artist and create a new world. There was talk about moving forward. They knew that education is their only path out of darkness. It is the only path that can bend the poverty line so that their fathers can stand, so that the threads of sewing and embroidery did not weaken their mothers’ eyes.
Shakiba was sent to Kabul by her farmer father from Uruzgan. He had sent her to study so she could go to university, for personal advancement and contributing to improving the plight of her generation. This Saturday, her body was sent back to him in a casket. For the past year, 16-year-old Zahra had walked by foot to Kaaj education centre. She said that she was studying to cure poverty. Zahra’s dream went underground along with her young body. What can we say about Hajar and Marzia and dozens of other Kaaj girls? What can we say about great dreams and their hope for a better future that was eliminated this Friday? This fateful Friday came, like the ominous Saturday last year. Do you remember that Saturday? The hill of Sayed Ul-Shuhada school was coloured with the blood of 90 students. They were not only 90 students that died that day, but 90 hopes for change, for building a bright future!
These untimely deaths, mass killings, have long been casting its ever-lengthening shadow on Dast-Barchi. For years, extremism has targeted the beating heart of Hazaras in universities, schools, education centers, hospitals, mosques, clubs, wedding salons, etc., because of their different identity. Why are Hazaras targeted? Because Hazaras represent a diverse, informed, and enlightened Afghanistan. It’s an Afghanistan where knowledgeable and expert men and women work side-by-side in building the future. Why do illiterate Hazara parents cut their own food budgets to spend on the education of their children? Because they have lived depravity, discrimination, and oppression. They know that building a better Afghanistan depends on having an educated and enlightened generation. For years, they have sacrificed to choose this path.
The enmity against Hazaras is not enmity with one ethnicity and one religious sect, but it is enmity with a bright and diverse Afghanistan where people are masters of their destiny. The people of Afghanistan know the enemy. They know what groups are enemies of knowledge and progress. Although many attacks against the Hazaras have been carried out by ISIS, the people of Afghanistan know very well that the ideology of ISIS is almost the same as the ideology of Taliban. It is difficult to distinguish between them. Both are equally extremist, reactionary, anti-Shia, and anti-women. Due to their common ideological origins, both the Taliban and ISIS pursue similar goals and beliefs. One of those is enmity with education. Another is hostility towards women and diversity.
Last week, the Taliban minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice said that “worldly education” is “permissible”, but the order of the “Amir” [the Taliban supreme leader] can ban the “permissible.” The dark worldview that Amir represents restricts the female population’s access to education and consequently deprives them of equal social participation. But Hazara fathers and mothers send their daughters to private educational centres with the money saved from carpet weaving and cart pulling to keep hope alive in their daughters’ hearts. Sending girls for higher education is disobeying the order of the Taliban Amir.
The suicide attack on the Kaaj educational centre had a clear message: the struggle of the Hazara people for awareness, knowledge, and to change the current situation will end in the cemetery. Enemies of science and knowledge want you to surrender to the darkness and choose fear over the idea of creating a different, brighter future.
Reject that thinking.
Those who think that people determined to change their destiny can be brought to their knees with war, bullets, suicide bombings and explosions, are wrong. Today’s Hazaras have learned from the experience of centuries of deprivation, oppression, and discrimination. No force can break their resolve to keep the flag of hope flying. No violence and murder can kill the burning desire of Hazaras masses to build a better future and raise a more aware generation. Just as the blood spilled on the hill of Sayed Ul-Shuhada school did not weaken their resolve to shape the future, the blood of the Kaaj girls has reawakened our collective hope for building a prosperous, progressive, and diverse Afghanistan, where all citizens have equal rights.
These days, the voices of solidarity are coming from Herat, Kabul, Bamyan, and from outside the borders of Afghanistan. It is as if the deaths of those girls at the Kaaj education centre acted as a wake-up call, as if understanding is spreading that mass murder of Hazaras is not only animosity with one ethnicity and one religious sect but also an attempt to murder diversity and hope for a better future. Standing with Hazaras means defending their rights and striving for a better future, a future in which women and men work side-by-side creating a better society for all. We will blossom and grow from the blood of the Kaaj girls.
