Afghan Girls Get Another Chance at Education

By Milton Cater

While many of us in the West take our education for granted there are so many who are denied the basic human right to learn in underprivileged countries, especially girls.  Milton Cater, a local Byron Bay rug merchant, expresses his love for Afghanistan and her people through a new project called The Yegonigi Friendship Group that has been established to help raise funds to reopen a girls’ school in the war-ravaged country.

Seated in a walled sun-filled courtyard and eating the most awesomely fragrant rockmelon, I felt, after 4 years living in Europe and the USA, that I had come home.
Herat, western Afghanistan, is a long way from Byron Bay, but has an unmistakeable air. This Central Asian city state par excellence, burial place of the Afghan Kings, home to generations of Afghanistan’s most famous artists, musicians and Sufi poets, is a city of gardens and extended families.

It was also home to Gohar Shad, the world’s first feminist. It was she who made schools co-ed, and instigated social and educational reforms that would be considered revolutionary in Australia today, such as free on-campus crèches for university mothers.

I found my calling in Herat and became a carpet dealer knowledgeable in tribal rugs and textiles. I door-knocked widely for antiques, made many friends and a profitable business, supported these friends and my family over the years, but felt incomplete until my introduction to Rahima Sarmed.

Rahima is an Australian citizen born in Herat, and was living locally in Alstonville when we met. She has since returned to help re-establish her old school, the Gohar Shad Primary School for Girls. Rahima, a librarian with teaching experience, is hoping to restart the education of young girls who were deprived of schooling by the Taliban.

Today the education system in Afghanistan is in a state of virtual collapse. Rebuilding is one of the country’s priorities as the education indicators in Afghanistan rank their system among the lowest in the world. The yearning for education among the population is universal and education is seen as a human right. It is publicly acknowledged that those who are educated can best serve their country and also aid the country’s rebuilding process. A key is to promote basic education for girls and other groups traditionally excluded from schooling, to strengthen parent and community organisations to become a positive force for improving education. A focus on women and children, specifically school feeding programs, following war, drought and repression is especially vital.

The courses will give the girls a chance to re-enter school after the 5 year official closure of all girls schools. Many of the girls secretly studied with their female teachers in their homes, but they need to freshen up their knowledge after the years of no formal education.

Rahima has been a resident of the Northern Rivers (of NSW, Australia) for the last two years, working at Wollongbar TAFE as a library technician. After the events of September 11 she said that when she saw Australians responding so negatively to anyone seen as Middle Eastern, she was very disappointed, expecting more from a country that prided itself on its respect for human rights and tolerance.

On October 11 last year [2001], she was devastated when she saw her birthplace being bombed, with the support of her adopted homeland. “It’s the same as bombing innocent people in Northern Ireland because of the IRA. The Americans created the Taliban, encouraging and funding them against the Russians, but now the Americans blame all Afghanis for the actions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda,” she said. “With the Tampa, the government deliberately started to confuse in people’s minds, the difference between the refugees who were fleeing the Taliban and the Taliban themselves. It was very cruel. As a refugee myself, it breaks my heart to see how they were treated. In the news, they speak about the Taliban as the Afghan Government. They were not the legitimate government, they were forced on Afghan people.” She continued, “It’s better for me to go back there, to at least help when no one else seems to care about the suffering of ordinary Afghans. There are nearly 25 million people (in Afghanistan), some people have to go back to help. So I decided to go. I know that it is still very dangerous, but I can’t just sit back and watch all of the suffering.”

The Yegonigi Friendship Group has been established to help raise funds to reopen The Gohar Shad Primary School for Girls and help equip it, ready for students. We need money for schoolbooks, stationery, floor mats, stoves and firewood for the often ice-cold classrooms.

Cash donations or to help with fund-raising for the school, please call Milton Cater on (02) 66872424 business hours or Sue Vader on (02) 66840149. (Australia)

First published byronchild/Kindred issue 2, June 02