Appendix

Human Rights Watch collected the following reports of physical attacks on school buildings and circulation of threatening leaflets from 2002 through May 2003. This list is not comprehensive.

In most cases, the attackers’ identities were not known, and in many cases the attackers communicated that they were explicitly opposed to the local and central government. As stated in the section above, “Fundamentalists Attacks on Schools,” Human Rights Watch received a report, which we were not able to confirm, that certain governmental officials were connected with the attacks in Wardak. But regardless of their source, the school attacks are part of the context of general insecurity that is impeding all children’s, but especially girls’, access to education in certain areas.

UNICEF-Afghanistan told Human Rights Watch that it did not believe that these incidents constituted a concerted attack on education:

We have not seen any evidence suggesting that these incidents comprise a concerted, anti-education effort. We could be seeing an isolated act of vandalism, or a personal feud gone awry involving someone in a particular school. At the same time, we cannot rule out the possibility that schools can be a ‘soft target’ for certain elements to express not necessarily an anti-education message, but one against non-Afghan influences.⁴²⁵

Human Rights Watch believes that these incidents do constitute a concerted threat to the right to education, especially that of girls. We urge the Ministry of Education, with the assistance of the Ministry of the Interior and UNICEF, to monitor and investigate all attacks on schools and the numbers of children affected. Procedures should be established for members of the public to report incidences. These data should be kept current and collected in a central database, accessible to the public.

Fundamentalist Attacks on Schools:

June 15, 2003: All six classrooms of the Arghandab boy’s school in Khawja Mulk village in Khandahar were set on fire and about 650 books destroyed.⁴²⁶

May 31, 2003: A school in Wardak was burned.⁴²⁷

May 22, 2003: A tent school for around 600 girls and boys was burned in Daulat Shah district of Laghman province.⁴²⁸

May 13, 2003: A school in Nangarhar province was burned.⁴²⁹

April 28, 2003: Unidentified people reportedly set a fire at a school in Sangeeni (or Shenki) village of Chaparhar village of Nangarhar province, destroying books and other equipment.⁴³⁰

April 19, 2003: Leaflets were reportedly posted on the walls of girls’ schools in Shinwar district in Nangarhar province, telling principals and parents “to dismiss the classes of girl students as soon as possible and to prevent girls from going to school, threatening them with death otherwise.”⁴³¹

April 11, 2003: A school in Zabul was burned.⁴³²

Early April 2003: The gate of a girls’ school burned in Malaki village in central Logar province.⁴³³

Late March or early April 2003: Fourteen armed men broke windows, destroyed materials, and burned books and World Food Program biscuits at Shah Mohmood Hotaki School for boys in Sheik Mohammdi, Kandahar.⁴³⁴ They also beat the night watchmen and held four teachers hostage.⁴³⁵ According to Kandahar’s deputy education minister, Soltan Mohammad Azizi, the incident was reported almost immediately to a nearby government checkpoint, but the soldiers did not respond.⁴³⁶ The first day of school after the incident, half of the boys stayed home.⁴³⁷ Shah Mohmood Hotaki School was one of at least seven boys’ schools attacked in Kandahar in early 2003, in some cases by men claiming to be from Jamiat Jehash Moslemein (Muslim Gathering Movement) who distributed leaflets warning people not to work with the Afghan or U.S. governments, to stay away from government cars or places where foreigners go, and not to go to dog fights.⁴³⁸ They also warned girls and women not to go to school.⁴³⁹

March 8, 2003: Darw Nika school in Dand district, Kandahar province, a temporary girls’ school built by UNICEF, was burned down.⁴⁴⁰ UNICEF subsequently provided tents.⁴⁴¹ As of March 27, 2003, the government had made no arrests.⁴⁴²

Around March 22, 3003: Aschool twenty-five kilometers away from Ghazni city was reportedly burned.⁴⁴³ Around the same time, leaflets were distributed reading, “You people who work with the government—you have six days and then we will operate against you.”⁴⁴⁴ UNICEF had no record of any such incident.⁴⁴⁵

Around March 27, 2003: A girls’ school in Zabul province was reportedly hit with rockets.⁴⁴⁶ However, UNICEF had no record of any such incident.⁴⁴⁷

March 2003: Al-Mahjoor school in Sardar Qala was reportedly burned.⁴⁴⁸ According to a man who went to the site the following day:

It was midnight that a car with some armed men inside stopped in front of the high school Al-Mahjoor, located in Sardar Qala. There were two watchmen and one or two from an NGO working for reconstruction there. The men tied their hands and feet; then they burned the school. I went there myself on the way to Ghazni and saw the school. The guards and others told this to the people, and I was there.⁴⁴⁹

The attack coincided with threatening leaflets being left in mosques, schools, and pasted on walls.⁴⁵⁰ The pamphlets said: “Those people who are working with government and NGOs they are against the Islam and they should their work. Also the girls should stop from going to school; otherwise they will be held responsible for their actions.”⁴⁵¹According to UNHCR officials, this was the third time similar pamphlets had been distributed in Ghazni; pamphlets were also distributed in Gelan, Nawa, Ab Band districts in Ghazni province.⁴⁵² UNICEF subsequently provided the school with tents and educational materials.⁴⁵³

Government officials later arrested four men, whom they said were senior Taliban officials, in connection with the fire and the distribution of the threatening leaflets.⁴⁵⁴

February 2003: In Kolagar, Logar province, shortly before a teacher training seminar was to be held, threatening leaflets were left in the mosque saying that the teachers “should not go to the seminar, go to school, or go out.”⁴⁵⁵ The seminar was still held but, according to a witness:

The teachers were afraid, but they all came. They said, “For four or five years we were working in our homes and now we have the opportunity to go out, and so nothing can stop us from coming out and teaching.” . . . Most of the letters were put in the mosque where the men go and they were trying to make the families say that the women shouldn’t go. Even though the received the letters, the men didn’t say anything, though.⁴⁵⁶

According to UNICEF, locals distributed the leaflets because of a “dispute between neighbors.”⁴⁵⁷ In this area, teachers hold classes in their homes because there are no girls’ school nearby.⁴⁵⁸

Around January 2003: Omarahan girls school in Chandal Ba-ee, Paghman, was burned.⁴⁵⁹ However, UNICEF had no record of any such incident.⁴⁶⁰

Winter 2002-2003: In Sorhabut, in Logar province, during winter classes attended by some two hundred girls, strange men threatened schoolgirls as they walked in front of the mosque on their way to school.⁴⁶¹ According to an eight-year-old girl in class three:

The men at the mosque told me I shouldn’t go to school. There were motioning like they were cutting their throats and said, “We will kill your teachers.” They didn’t have knives but were motioning like you kill an animal—halal. We ran away from them. They were wearing shalwar kamiz and blue turbans. I was afraid.⁴⁶²

A teacher confirmed her account: “The men standing outside the mosque were strange men, and we didn’t know or recognize them. They said to the girls, ‘Come here.’ And when they came, they said, ‘You should not go to school anymore. We will kill your teachers so don’t go any more.’ The children came to us and told us this.”⁴⁶³

In the same area, also during the winter, threatening leaflets were left in the mosque and on the road in front where the girls walk to school. According to a teacher, the leaflets said, “We will find everyone who supports or works with the government and do whatever we want with them. If we find you we will kill you.”⁴⁶⁴

One teacher told Human Rights Watch: “Students come to me and say that they have received threatening letters in their homes. But we won’t give up. I tell them that first they will kill me and then you can escape.”⁴⁶⁵ Another said, “We will not stop. We have lots of daughters, and this is for their future.”[466]

Teachers in another area of Logar also told Human Rights Watch: “Sometimes we receive letters at night saying “You should not go to school or go out.’”⁴⁶⁷

October 24 and 25, 2002: Four schools for girls in Wardak province were attacked and school buildings and educational materials damaged.⁴⁶⁸ Two schools—Fatima-Tul-Zokhura school in Nirkh district and Deh Afghani school in Meyden Shah—were struck by rocket-propelled grenades; an undetonated grenade was left at Naswane Amar Baba School in Charaka village and floor matting and chalkboards were dragged outside and burned; and a fire was started at Naswane Jalrez school, the village’s first girls’ school.⁴⁶⁹ Some of attacks were accompanied by leaflets left at mosques and on the schools’ doors saying that it was un-Islamic to educate girls and warning, “Parents, if you send your girls to school, you will be responsible for the consequences.”⁴⁷⁰ Some time after the attacks, one of the schools, in Charka village, reportedly closed.⁴⁷¹ The government had made no arrests as of March 27, 2003.⁴⁷² Also in October, a rocket was fired into the wall of the Bibi Fatima Ul Zahras girls’ school in Karimdad district, Wardak province.⁴⁷³

October 16, 2002: A teacher was slightly injured from a small explosive device fixed under a couch at Mohmood-e-Tarzi school in Kandahar.⁴⁷⁴ The government said the incident was due to an internal dispute among school staff and had made no arrests as of March 27, 2003.⁴⁷⁵

September or October 2002: A girls’ school was reportedly burned in Jawzjan province.⁴⁷⁶ However, UNICEF it had no record of any such incident.⁴⁷⁷

September or October 2002: Three girls’ schools were burned in Zabul province.⁴⁷⁸

September 25, 2002: Two tents being used as girls’ classrooms were burned in Sar-e Pul province.⁴⁷⁹ Leaflets warning against “schools of the infidels” were distributed around the same time.⁴⁸⁰ Authorities later said they had arrested people in connection with the fires.”⁴⁸¹

Late August or early September 2002: Johan MalakaGhazni High School for girls in Ghazni province was rocketed following the distribution of leaflets warning parents to keep their daughters at home.⁴⁸² A man from Ghazni told Human Rights Watch:

There were three different bombings of the girls’ schools [in Ghazni]—two successful and one averted. The first time, it was April [2002], and two girls were killed. The second time, it was June, and no one was killed. The third time, it was September, and someone discovered the bomb before it went off. There are fewer girls in school in Ghanzi now because of these bombings. . . . I had four girls in my family who were in school there, but after the bombings my family took them out of school.⁴⁸³

May or June 2002: In Kolangar, Logar, a teacher said she found similar leaflets:

I saw a paper and picked it up. It was sticky on the back so that it could be stuck to a wall. It wasn’t very big. It said, “If you are working with this government which belongs to kafirs [infidels] and doesn’t belong to Afghans, we will start a war against the kafirs and this government.” It didn’t say anything specifically about teaching. But we also belong to the government because we are teaching. . . . The paper didn’t mention teachers, just the government, but I am a teacher so it means that Muslim people should not work with kafirs. It meant me, as a teacher.⁴⁸⁴

Human Rights Watch also received reports, without a specific time period, that threatening leaflets were distributed and attached to trees on the way to school in Chahparhar district in Nangarhar province.⁴⁸⁵ According to teachers in the area, the pamphlets “intimidate[ed] women, telling them not to go to school; warning families not to send their girls to school.”⁴⁸⁶ While the pamphlets mentioned the names of Hekmatyar and Mullah Omar, one women in the area said, “I do not believe it was their act. It is the armed men in power in the area who distribute the leaflets.”⁴⁸⁷