By Alok Bhatt
Impunity Watch SDO,  Asia

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – Female students in Kabul and the Kunduz province of Afghanistan recently began falling ill and hospitalized after what is now being suspected as a poison attack.  Victims were admitted to the hospital after manifesting symptoms such as vomiting  and blinking in and out of consciousness.  The exact number of affected girls has not yet been confirmed, but  female students continue to enter hospitals demonstrating similar symptoms.  Although the illness contracted from the apparent poison attacks does not seem severe and the inflicted girls are being released from the hospital after only a few days, these attacks do have grave implications concerning the state of Afghanistan and the manner in which anti-government forces are willing to illustrate their beliefs.

Young students reported seeing their classmates suddenly begin to vomit and pass out on the floors after catching a strange odor in the hallways of their schools.  Some reported that the teachers pardoned the small as nothing to worry about.  However, the girls themselves took initiative to alert the police after witnessing their classmates fall ill and collapse.

The poison attacks have been considered a terror tactic to express the idea that females should have no right to education.  The purpose of the attacks seem to be to scare the families of the students and refuse to send them to school because of the constant present dangers.  This terror tactic also has the effect of suggesting that even places of education which house young girls are not safe from the subjugation of those who oppose the Afghan government and its collaboration with other governments.

The Taliban has explicitly denied responsibility for the poison attacks on the students.  Authorities themselves do not seem to know as of yet whether or not the destructive actions signify a poison gas attack or food poisoning.  However, this instance represents one of a continual chain of similar attacks on girls schools over the past couple years, taking place in numerous areas of Afghanistan.  One particularly notorious trend of strikes occurred in Kandahar two years ago, in which male motorbike riders drove by students and splashed their faces with acid.  The attacks on females students have caused many schools to close down.  Also, as a  condition of the Taliban rule from 1996-2001, education for women was legally prohibited.

For more information, please see:

Al-Jazeera – ‘Gas attack’ targets Afghan girls – 12  May 2010

BBC – “Mass illness’ hits Afghan girls in Kunduz – 25 April 2010

The Huffington Post – Afghan Schoolgirls Fall Ill, Poison Feared – 25 April 2010