Shooting women in the head: A suicide attack on a school in Afghanistan as part of a campaign against extremism and the Taliban
A suicide attack on an educational center in Afghanistan’s capital killed at least nineteen people, most of them young female students, adding to fears that the new Taliban government can’t protect them from rising violence by extremists.
At least 27 people have been wounded in a blast at a school in Afghanistan, Taliban officials said, and is the latest in a series of attacks on education centers. Medical staff that treated the victims in nearby hospitals said final casualty figures could be much higher.
Hazara students were targeted several times for their love of learning, says Modaqeq. The terrorists tend to target the places of education that are located within the limits of the Hazara community.
Predictably, since the Taliban has taken over, it has imposed many restrictions on women’s freedoms, including the closure of girls’ high schools. Millions of Afghan girls have not gone to school in over a year.
The new government was quick with assurances that the Taliban of the 2020s was not the Taliban of the 1990s and that there would not be a brutal campaign against the women of Afghanistan.
Nilaab believed that they were telling the truth. She hoped so. After a decade in exile, she came back to her homeland as a teenager, but was not eager to go back again.
What did Marzia and her idol, Shafak, want to accomplish in her childhood? The attacks on the Hazaras have intensified in recent attacks against Shia Muslims
In an undated entry in her diary, 16-year-old Marzia Mohammadi drew up a list of all the things she wanted to do in her life. At the very top was her wish to meet the best-selling Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak, followed by a visit to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and having pizza at an Italian restaurant.
The murders have evoked widespread condemnations and calls for justice globally, including from Marzia and Hajar’s idol, Shafak. It was heartbreaking to learn that they were fond of reading my novels. Shafakt told NPR that the death of Marzia and Hajar along with dozens of other Afghan girls in a suicide bombing at a learning centre is heart-wrenching.
Marzia’s list included everyday things like wanting to ride a bike, learn the guitar, or walk in the park late at night — simple tasks women and girls could not aspire to while living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
But Marzia was different, said her uncle, Zaher Modaqeq, who found her diaries with her belongings after her death. “She was creative and had such clarity of thought. Some of her thoughts were so profound that I couldn’t believe [they] were expressed by such a young child,” he said, the grief evident in his voice.
“An important aspect of the ongoing targeted attacks against the Hazaras that is consistently overlooked is the disproportionate impact on women,” said Anis Rezaei, a Hazara academic who is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Oxford University.
Attacks against Hazaras — largely Shia Muslims who have been historically persecuted by Sunni militant groups — have increased significantly in the past year since the Taliban takeover. At least 700 people were killed or injured in attacks on the Hazaras, documented in a report published last month by Human Rights Watch.
A Memorino of Marzia and Her Uncle, Hussaini, and the First Night of Kabul: The Road Towards Architecture
I asked Hussaini if he knew anything about Marzia and Hajar. His face lit up. His parents are shopkeepers, and he said they loved learning. They were his best students. One of them would be Number 2 if they had the best grade in the class. He said their love for learning energized him.
As the American troops tried to secure Kabul that night, Marzia and Hajar distracted themselves from the chaos around them by watching the American movie I Still Believe. Marzia wrote in her diary “An entire day wasted” before she went to bed.
On August 23, she described her first experience of the city under Taliban rule: “Stepped out for the first time since the arrival of the Taliban. I was very afraid and nervous at the same time. I purchased Elif Shafak’s Architect’s Apprentice, and today I realised how much I love books and libraries. The joy on people’s faces is something I like.
And the next day, she wrote, “I had a tiring day … I had some nightmares but I can’t remember if I had screaming or crying in my sleep. When I woke up, I had an uncomfortable feeling. I cried and was better after going to a corner.
“Because of her diaries, we know that she and Hajar want to be architects, a field that involves their love for art and creativity, and they had been taking practice tests at the learning center,” Modaqeq said, adding that the girls thoroughly researched the courses and industry.
Marzia and Hajar scored 50 and 51 percent out of 100 respectively on the first practice test they took. In the diary entry that day, Marzia remarked that she was not happy with the score and she would aim to get 60 on the next week’s mock test. She scored 61. On that day, she wrote, “Wow, Bravo Marzia!”
Her uncle said that her scores continued to improve. “Her last score was at 82 percent. “She hoped to maintain her score this week, but then she would lose it,” her uncle said, unable to finish his thought.
It wasn’t easy and many parents wouldn’t let their girls go to school, but it was changed by social consciousness within the community.
Modqeq hopes the Afghan society sees a similar awakening. “I may sound very idealistic but I truly believe that the only way for the violence to end in Afghanistan is through education,” he said.
Shafak sent a message of support to the girls of Afghanistan. “I have enormous respect for the women and girls in Afghanistan who are fighting for their right to education. She wrote a personal note that said, “You are not alone.”
The two teenagers — Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh — have become the new faces of the protests that have convulsed the country for the past month, the largest and most sustained bout of civil unrest to grip Iran since 2009. Posters with the images of the rulers of Iran appear on the walls of cities throughout the country, as well as banners with their names and a cry for anger being directed against them.
Pierre Karattar and the Fate of Two Missing Teenagers in Rome: From the Affair to the Dawn of the Second World War
They were last seen alive by their relatives. One family was desperate to locate their daughter for 10 days, while the other only found out their daughter was missing after a few hours.
But the grim result was the same. The missing teenagers had been killed by the security forces, their families and human rights groups said. One girl’s skull was smashed, and the other girl’s head was cracked by baton blows. Their bodies were covered in wounds and bruised. They were both just 16.
After the tragic event, PierreKattar went to Rome to see a demonstration by Afghans.
The protest was emotional and intense. A white smoke flare was set off, young women hit the ground and played dead. The people were portraying the suicide bombing. A mother sobbed into her child’s hair. I saw tears everywhere I looked. It was extremely sad.
I saw two men holding a poster with pictures of the young girls who were killed in the suicide bombing, and I recognized them as Marzia and her best friend, Hajar.
Three girls were sent to us by Marzia’s family and I was looking at the photos. I showed the story to the men holding the poster, because I pulled it up on my phone. The man in the blue sweater said, “I was their teacher.”
He told me of a narrow escape from the Taliban. Taliban members showed up at the private school where he taught. They re-took power in Afghanistan in October of 2021.
When an Afghan student’s teacher leaves, a teacher’s mother tells him: “We will make your face white”, a saying the principal told him
They asked the principal to show them surveillance footage from inside the classrooms; there were cameras everywhere throughout the school for security reasons. The principal obliged.
That’s when the Taliban men saw one of Hussaini’s lectures. He had degrees in economics and business management when he was a teacher. He lectured about how bad the economy was since the Taliban banned women from getting an education and being able to work.
A teacher stopped teaching and ran through a back door. He went home and left Kabul the next day. He fled to Afghanistan’s Daykundi Province, which is far from the capital and has a majority of ethnic Hazaras.
He remembered something the girls said to him at a local event known as Teachers Day. It was October 5, 2020. Marzia and Hajar told him: “We will make your face white.”
It was a saying I hadn’t heard before. Hussaini explained that it’s a phrase used in Afghanistan. It means they were going to make him proud with all of their future accomplishments.