Crumpled Dreams: Thousands of Afghan girls face a school-less future in Afghanistan
Caught between the tug of war between Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, hundreds and thousands of Afghan girls living and studying in Pakistan are forced to abandon their education and all hopes of a reasonable future they had been dreaming all these years.
With great difficulty, these young ones had begun to go to schools in Pakistan where their parents had escaped the barbarous Taliban regime. In schools, they found companionship and knowledge. It was a world away from the cruel universe of the adults. There were no wars, no bombs, no guns and no fear. Classrooms were bare but full of laughter and the excitement of learning.
While Pakistan is drumming up the narrative that the Israeli attack on Gaza as killing children, the politicians and their patrons in the army are busy throwing hundreds and thousands of children to a place which is no less violent and despondent as today’s Gaza.
All because the Pakistan Army, which not long ago considered itself as the Guardian of Islam, had first sponsored the same set of terrorists who had turned against them at present. The army has put their collective failure to deal with terrorists on the hapless Afghans, especially their children, who considered a shelter for all Muslims as the country’s founding fathers had visualised.
The Generals and their proxies cannot see the tears of these children while they leave no television show to bemoan the plight of Palestinian children. This hypocritical attitude has pushed the Afghan children to a worse life than they had ever imagined.
As these young girls, carrying their books and satchels, are moving into Afghanistan, their tears may have dried up but their hopes continue to crash around them. The Taliban do not allow girls to study in schools beyond Grade 6. There are no schools for them. They cannot study in the confines of their homes even–if found their parents would be severely punished. There is nothing they can do except to bemoan that their cries, unlike that of Palestinian children, will not be heard by anyone in the world.
Afghanistan is not their home. They were born in Pakistan. They are as much a Pakistani as everyone else. They have every right as a citizen, by law. But in a country run by a duplicitous army and corrupt political parties, who will listen to them. The newspapers are full of stories of Gaza and Ukraine. There are rare news or articles about Afghan refugees, almost none about children, there is no thought given to girls and their future.
Children have no place in Pakistan. A large number of them work as indentured labour; many fall victim to sexual predators. Millions remain out of school. Despite all these grave odds, Afghan girls have been able to enjoy little sunshines in makeshift classrooms set up by good samaritans.
In one of those rare articles in a newspaper, a writer wrote about a ten-year-old Palwasha, a third-generation Afghan immigrant born and raised in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Pakistan was her home. She studied till Grade 5 at a local government school. She nursed dreams of growing up and pursuing a career in medicine. But came the guillotine of deportation and she had to abandon everything precious to her and go to a strange country which everyone was saying was her country. She told the writer, “In Afghanistan, the Taliban have banned girls’ education from Grade 6 onwards. How will I ever fulfil my dream of studying medicine?”
Palwasha is among 101,230 children deported to Afghanistan via the Torkham border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as reported by English daily, the Express Tribune, recently.
(With Syndicate Arrangement)