Acid Oppression, Steely Resistance

In the face of the Taliban's attempts to reassert power and impose its highly restrictive and gender discriminatory religious norms on the Afghan population, a courageous and perhaps unexpected group of individuals are resisting. A recent article by Dexter Filkins of the New York Times explores the struggles and resistance of female Afghan students of various ages as they seek to be educated against the attempts of (presumably) the Taliban who are trying to halt this. As Filkins' article illustrates, many of these schoolchildren and teachers have been subjected to acid attacks and severe burns, impairing their ability to see and read for extended periods. In spite of these assaults and the persistent threats to coerce them from attending school, these students are defying the unofficial (for the Taliban does not formally control the government) legal normative structure imposed around Kandahar. They do so by continuing to go to school in the absence of proper state protection and resources.

Coupled with the resistance of these courageous students is the defiance of their parents as well as school officials who similarly seek to have the children educated. As one of the students, 17 year-old Shamsia attests: “[m]y parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed." Shamsia's uncle posits that he doesn't "want the girls sitting around and wasting their lives.” Mahmood Qadari, the headmaster of the school urged the parents (in the face of the many threats) "not to give in to darkness. Education is the way to improve our society.”

The resistance here seeks to achieve various goals. One of these goals is certainly that the students can achieve something on a personal level while asserting the freedom to make certain choices and exercise their rights. It also serves a larger goal of improving Afghan society ravaged after years of foreign invasion by the former Soviet Union and the subsequent civil war. Education is part of the larger reconstruction efforts that are afoot. However it requires defiance and persistence against those who seek to stop such advancement.