Poisoned Afghan School Girls’ Questions Remain Unanswered

Hadisa Osmani

When I arrived at school that day I noticed all the students standing around the yard. They seemed terrified and nervous. I asked one of my friends if she knew what was going on.

“The girls at the school near us have been poisoned. We are afraid to go inside the buildings as our water or classes may have been contaminated as well,” She said.

“The fact that the other school had an incident doesn’t mean our school is contaminated,” I told her.

“Yes, but the Taliban have been distributing letters around the town and warning families against sending their daughters to school,” She replied.

A few minutes later our classmates’ parents came to collect them ad we all returned home. For many of the girls in our rural province of Sar-e-Pul that was the last day of school. The students who did return also never got answers about what had happened and why. We didn’t even know if the rest of the country and the world had become aware of this incident in our city.

This is not the first time a suspicious incident like this has prevented girls’ education. In Takhar, Balkh, Herat, Ghazni and many other provinces in Afghanistan, girls’ school have been closed down temporarily or even permanently after students claimed to be poisoned, but near to nothing has been done to address the concerns of the students and their families.

There are conflicting reports about what is causing girls to fell ill. The Ministry of Education has claimed that either mass hysteria or unclean classrooms are the cause while the Ministry of Interior claims girls are attacked by the Taliban or other terrorist groups who oppose education. The conversation was complicated even more when in 2013, a report by the World Health Organization claimed that there was no proof of contamination in the schools they visited and the girls who claim who to have been poisoned are suffering from hysteria and trauma. An earlier report by WHO had confirmed the existence of a toxic gas after testing the blood of girls who were ill. Why the contradiction? Neither report has been made available to Afghans and the families of the girls who faced the trauma.

If the Ministry of Education and the WHO are correct and girls’ like those in my neighborhood were not poisoned but are ill because of psychological pressures, why haven’t we done anything to address their trauma? Why do we let these illnesses to continue to haunt and harm girls? In addition, the WHO report did not include all the incidents of poisoning but a few. Isn’t it possible that the dozens of incidents around the country are not caused by the same thing?

If the Ministry of Education’s claim about lack of sanitation at schools is correct, why aren’t these incidents as common boys’ schools? Are boys’ schools cleaner? If yes, why? Does girls’ health not matter?

What I saw at the school near my house contradicts the claims by officials. Girls in my area experienced skin problems such as burning and itching in their hands and feet- the body parts not covered by their school uniforms. The doctors told us that the students were given anti-allergic medication as they were showing signs of allergy to toxins. None of the girls in our area were interviewed by an international organization or the government. Our questions were never answered. Our fears have not gone away. 

The lack of accountability of national and international officials who urge us to go to schools but don’t provide protection, or even answers, is unacceptable. The fact that there isn’t enough research to explain what happened to thousands of girls in this country is telling of a wider societal problem as well. Afghan girls risk their lives to go to schools and our families risk their reputation and safety by supporting our right to education but when we are attacked, no one stands by us. Attacks on our schools and health are seen as normal or dismissed as hysteria. If we are the future of Afghanistan, aren’t our lives worth protecting?

—

Read this piece in Persian here.