Wave Of Hope

In our last post we promised to come back to the lack of support for banning girls’ education in Afghanistan. With good reason. First of all, it is obviously a major explanation of, indeed a prerequisite for, our ability to run secret schools for girls above the age of 12. Second, it is fundamentally important for us to spread the news about this fact. It shows that hope exists even under the darkest circumstances. Not the least: Funding our schools would have been much more difficult if nobody believed that they were actually able to operate.
Our witness this time is Norwegian field worker Ayesha Wolasmal. She was born and raised in Oslo, but only a year after her parents fled Afghanistan under the first Taliban regime.
She has, since 2019, worked for women’s and children’s health in Afghanistan. At the moment, she is a consultant working for the United Nations polio vaccine programme, visiting and cooperating with government officials all over the country.
Recently she published a book in Norwegian, Tusen dager med Taliban, (A thousand days with Taliban). It received the most prestigious literary award in Norway, the Brage Prize, for best non-fiction book of 2024.
In the book, Ayesha Wolasmal relates how she fled Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover. However, she soon decided to return to take up her work with women’s and children’s health. The book gives a fantastic description of the demanding conditions and the brave stance she has taken again and again towards the people in power. Her ability to behave within the existing limits and at the same time challenge attitudes that hinder children from getting the vaccination they need is astonishing.
And, in this context, the most astonishing of all: till this day, after working closely with the Taliban ever since the takeover, she has yet to meet one single person who supports the banning of education of girls above the age of twelve. The order from above has absolutely no support! Not even from Taliban officials across the country.
Make no mistake: the situation for girls and women in Afghanistan is horrific. It is the only country in the world that bans education for women. Meryl Streep is still right. Squirrels have more rights than girls because they can play in the park. But the lack of public support, including within Taliban, opens small cracks, and, as Leonard Cohen writes so beautifully: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”
We wish we could show you more of the beautiful photos and videos we get from our schools by encrypted media. Obviously, for security reasons, we have to be very careful. What we can show you, is this video with Ayesha Wolasmal, addressing a Norad conference last year. An impressive speech from an impressive woman.
(Norad is The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and works under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-yeB4DUzfM