Security Exchange News

Female students demand education after bombing

16 November 2022
 


A major suicide bomb attack targeted an educational centre in Kabul on Friday 30 September, killing at least 53 students – most of them young women. The blast occurred in the female section of the gender-segregated Kaj Education and Learning Centre in the Shia Muslim Hazara majority community of Dasht-e-Barchi, Kabul. Students had been undertaking practice exams at the time. Following the attack, Afghan women in academia have been leading demonstrations to protest against attacks targeting women and the Shia Muslim minority. Throughout the last week, protests have been reported in Kabul and other large cities, including Herat, Bamyan and Mazar-i-Sharif.

In its 2022 World Report, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that although the Taliban-led interim government in Afghanistan claimed theoretical support for girls’ education, its policies have failed to realise what this should mean in practice, with women and girls not allowed to share higher education with male counterparts. The HRW report wrote, that “a lack of female teachers, especially in higher education, likely means this policy will lead to de facto denial of access to education for many girls and women”. The Taliban has also abolished the Ministry for Women’s Affairs and repurposed its building in Kabul as the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – an institution responsible for enforcing rules on citizens’ behaviour, including how women dress, and when or whether women may be allowed to move outside the home unaccompanied by a male relative. Women are also banned from travelling further than 45 miles without a male chaperone and have also been ordered by the Taliban to cover their faces in public. Rights groups claim the Taliban has broken multiple pledges to respect human and women’s rights.

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has joined Afghan women protesting in condemning the attack, calling for all Afghans to have the right to a free and fair education. Protesters have been calling for the reopening of schools for girls in Afghanistan following the attack but have also been calling for an end to violence against the Hazara ethnic minority community, which is predominantly made up of Shia Muslims, who have historically faced persecution and are often targeted in violent attacks. While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, it’s suspected Islamic State (IS) militants are responsible, as they have a history of targeting Shia Muslims and the Hazara community.

Although the demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, they have been met with a Taliban backlash. Witnesses claim Taliban security forces have been firing warning shots, while there is some evidence of protesters being beaten by Taliban security personnel as they violently dispersed protesters. In Mazar-i-Sharif, demonstrators were allegedly locked up inside their own campus, when Taliban forces surrounded Balkh University and refused to allow students to leave as they sought to participate in protests. Where journalists and media staff have been banned, some protesting women have begun to document the demonstrations themselves, only to have Taliban forces confiscate or break protesters’ phones. Heather Barr, associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at HRW, has highlighted how “incredibly dangerous” it is for women in Afghanistan to protest, noting that the Taliban’s response has been ‘predictably brutal’ but has included “new abusive strategies such as locking students in their hostels”. The Taliban has also done very little to assist or protect targeted communities such as the Hazaras and has instead defended the level of force used in response to protests, claiming demonstrators should notify the relevant authorities and obtain the necessary permissions so the security forces can prepare for any “possible threats”. Some who have attended the demonstrations have indicated that, despite the Taliban crackdowns, there has still been a strong turnout, in part due to women being encouraged by male protesters.

The suicide bombing at the Raj Education Centre in Kabul has since been followed by another suicide bomb attack within the space of a week. On Wednesday 5 October, at least four people were killed and a further 25 others were also injured when a bomber targeted the mosque at the Interior Ministry in Kabul during prayers. While there is no evidence of the latest attack has targeted women, Shia Muslims, or members of the Hazara community in particular, it is believed it was most likely also carried out by IS militants – although no such claim of responsibility has been made so far. The deadly attacks highlight the ongoing instability and deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, over a year on from the Taliban takeover, with IS still a prominent threat to regional security. Since the Taliban ousted the US-backed democratic government, IS have claimed responsibility for at least 13 attacks against Hazaras, and have been linked to at least five more, killing and injuring more than 700 people in total. Among those include four attacks in April 2022, which killed a collective total of 45 Hazara and Shia Muslims in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Samangan.

Due to the Taliban’s crackdown on the media at the local level, additional attacks are also suspected to have gone unreported. The majority of these attacks have gone without any serious response from the Taliban, potentially due to the Taliban’s own murky past of targeting Shia Muslims. During the 1990s, the Taliban ruthlessly targeted Shia Muslims in mass killings, among other abuses, and their return to power last year sparked immediate concern amongst the minority. Calls for the Taliban-led government to investigate increased attacks on Hazara and Shia communities have been accompanied by international concerns that such attacks are becoming increasingly systematic in nature. The Taliban’s failure to adequately protect persecuted minorities and prevent attacks suggest little will be done to protect women’s rights as the deadly attacks become a morbid hallmark of the Taliban’s suppressive regime.