Not counting the attacks of the last month, in just over a year 700 members of the Shia minority have been killed in 13 attacks by the Islamic State. The girls who had gone out to protest in the streets to ask for protection suffered food poisoning, probably a deliberate act by the Taliban. Yesterday there was another explosion against a headquarters of the Afghan authorities.
Milan () – “I had not yet opened my eyes wide, on the morning of September 30, when I read the news that the Kaaj educational center had been attacked by terrorists”. The speaker is Amena Baturi, a 16-year-old Hazara who fled Afghanistan just over a year ago after the Taliban reconquered it. “I was very angry, I couldn’t believe it, I tried to locate someone who was in contact with the school: classmates, friends, but there was no response. Only after several hours, through social networks, did I find out that several students had been killed or injured, including some former classmates”. The blast killed 53 people, including 46 Hazara students.
Amena is also a former student of the institution. The young woman has been a national and international taekwondo champion since her childhood, and in the past she attended the public school in the Dasht-e-Barchi district of Kabul, which suffered a terrorist attack by the IS-K (Islamic State of Khorasan Province). at the end of last month. The young athlete wanted to study mathematics because “we hoped for a better future for our generation.”
On the morning of September 30, as soon as she heard the news of the attack, Amena contacted her friend Omulbanin, also a Hazar refugee who now lives in Italy and, like her, is a former student at the Kaaj educational center: “Amena was screaming and She asked him to call Maryam, Sharifa and Rehela. Only one of her friends, Maryam, managed to save herself as she was late for a scheduled exam that morning.” “After two days I called her and asked her how she was doing,” continued Omulbanin. I will never recover,” replied her friend. “I wish that no one in this world was tired of living because they belong to a group or ethnicity.”
The Taliban, who had reported a death toll of 30, threatened students and teachers not to take photos for the media and not to report the incident. In the days following the attack, women took to the streets to protest to demand the right to study and an end to the genocide against the Hazara community. This Shia minority has always been persecuted in Afghanistan: first by the Taliban and now by the fundamentalists of the Islamic State, who consider that the new authorities of the country are “lukewarm” with the Islamic ideology. About fifty girls ended up in the hospital with food poisoning: According to some sources, this was a deliberate act by the Taliban to put an end to the demonstrations.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a month ago (so it does not include the most recent attacks, including the one on September 30), more than 700 Hazaras have been killed in at least 13 attacks by the local branch of the former ISIS in the last year.
The most recent attack, which appears to be aimed at the Taliban and not religious minorities, took place yesterday: in the late afternoon, an explosion occurred in a mosque near the Ministry of the Interior. The exact number of victims is not known (according to some sources there are at least 20) because the authorities persist in pretending that they are capable of administering the country.
This is clearly not the case: the Human Rights Watch report accuses the Taliban government of failing to protect minorities and provide adequate medical care for victims and their families, despite committing to do so when they took power in August of last year. “The problem is not that the Taliban are responsible for the violence. They are responsible for not providing adequate security for their population,” said John Sifton, regional director for HRW Asia. “If they intend to act as a government authority, their first priority should be to protect the population from violence” by IS-K. The humanitarian organization fears that many suicide attacks – especially those in remote provinces – are not carried out. come forward because of the Taliban’s control over the media.
