In the following article, Sandro Tavares, a writer for Teens in Print—a writing program empowering Boston students—explores Sima Samar's efforts over 45 years to combat the cycle of hatred in Afghanistan through education, her humanitarian work aiding women, and her advocacy for women's rights amidst the backdrop of Afghanistan's tumultuous history, highlighting the crucial role of education in fostering peace and emphasizing the importance of protecting women's rights globally.
For the past 45 years, Sima Samar has been using education to fight against the cycle of hatred that has been perpetuated in Afghanistan. Since graduating from university in 1982 as a medical doctor, she has been doing humanitarian work to aid women in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In my research I learned that Afghanistan has been dealing with the aftermath of a proxy war between the U.S and the Soviet Union since the 1980s, when the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Afghanistan in order to defend the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) from the Mujahideen, a U.S.-backed, conservative, guerrilla group which was trying to overthrow their pro-communist government. After her husband was arrested by the DRA, Samar and her son sought refuge in Pakistan. “I moved to Pakistan because I had to,” Samar explained. “I had a son, and there were no possibilities for education other than being a refugee in Pakistan.”
While in Pakistan she worked in a hospital helping refugees, and witnessed firsthand the discrimination that Afghani refugees faced. “A doctor who was my colleague…was always saying ‘these dirty Afghans,’ and I [would argue,] ‘Yes, but we are forced to come here. We did not come here for a picnic.’”
In 1989 she established a girls’ clinic for Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Quetta, where she trained medical staff, provided healthcare to the women, and educated them about reproductive health. She tried to publish a book she wrote for the girls to learn from but was stopped by a U.N worker. “He said, ‘We do not print any religious issues.’ I said, ‘There is no religion in this book. It’s just health education, it’s really simple.’ He replied, ‘Sima can you leave the book here and come [back] next week? I will ask … my Afghan colleague to read it and see if we can help you.’” When she returned, he told her, “‘We cannot print it … because you’re talking about contraception and family planning. … We cannot do that because the fundamentalist Mujahideen group will bomb our office.”
The Mujahideen eventually won; in the early 90s they overthrew the DRA which created a power vacuum which led to four years of civil war between various groups including Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (later the Taliban and Al-Qaeda), Hezb-e Wahdat, and Junbish-i Melli. The four-year civil war in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban taking control of Kabul along with most of the country. This lasted until 2001 when, following the 9/11 attacks, U.S. president George W. Bush ordered the U.S invasion of Afghanistan in order to stomp out Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks.
For the next twenty years, while the U.S. fought the Taliban for occupation of Afghanistan, an interim government was established where Dr. Samar served as deputy president after returning to Afghanistan in 2002. She later served as the first Minister of Women’s Affairs, a government position dedicated solely to advocating for the protection of women’s rights and wellbeing in Afghanistan. From 2002 – 2019 she led the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), an agency which sought to defend and promote human rights as well as looking into human rights violations.
Having had the opportunity to speak with Sima Samar, it’s clear that she places great value on education, and the role that the lack of it plays in the violence in Central Asia. She told me, “Put yourself in the shoes of someone [with] a daughter [who] is not allowed to go to school. And then at the age of twelve, she’s already given [in] marriage to someone because there’s not anything else. And then the impact that from [the] age of fourteen, she [gives birth to] children [until] the age of fifty. … Uneducated, unemployed, young men are frustrated. They join the terrorist groups, the girls are victims of domestic violence and forced marriage, child marriage. And the whole cycle continues repeatedly.”
This leads Dr. Samar to the conclusion that, in order to create peace, it is vital to protect the rights of women not only in Afghanistan but around the world, because the organizations that form in places where citizens aren’t treated with dignity have effects far beyond the country where they formed. “If you hear [about] the people who are killed [at] the border between Iran and Turkey, the majority are Afghan; if the ship sinks, close to Greece or Italy, the majority are Afghan. [This is] because women [don’t] have access to reproductive rights. First, they don’t have the information because they don’t have education. Secondly, they don’t have access to contraception.”
In August 2021 the U.S. pulled their military troops out of Afghanistan. When this happened it was made painfully obvious that, on top of Osama Bin Laden (the leader of Al-Qaeda) not even being in Afghanistan, our reconstruction efforts also were a resounding failure, as the Taliban was able to retake the country within ten days of our withdrawal despite twenty years of pouring money into their infrastructure and military. To me this means that we basically went there for no reason.
When the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan, Sima Samar was visiting family in the U.S. since then she has remained in Massachusetts and worked with Harvard’s chapter of Scholars at Risk. This program at Harvard and universities across the country supports scholars who are unable to safely continue their work in their own countries, by giving them research and teaching opportunities in the U.S.
Since coming to the U.S., Sima has been working on a book that is set to be published this February. It is a memoir detailing her life as a doctor and public official, her advocacy for women’s rights, the founding of schools and hospitals, as well as giving the reader a view into her life during the war. “I have gone through a lot of difficulties in my life and suffered a lot during these forty-five years of war in the country and being in danger.”
Dr. Samar makes clear that the situation in Afghanistan still hasn’t been resolved: women haven’t gained equal rights, the Taliban hasn’t been taken out of power, and we seem to have stopped talking about the situation very quickly. But the U.S is still probably the most capable of doing something about the situation, and it is largely our responsibility due to over forty years of funding and intervening in their government. So what should be done moving forward? Dr. Samar says, “I think it should be a clear, clear message to the Taliban, for accountability on [the] commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including [what we call] gender apartheid, discrimination against women. … It should be clear that they should not negotiate on [the] principle of human rights. If you do not respect human rights, what are we fighting for? … I think the strongest tool for sustainable peace is the respect for implementation of human rights principles in any country, not only in my country, in any other country, including all these wars going on around us. … We should look at the mistakes that we’ve [made] in the past and learn from those mistakes. And denial of the problem in Afghanistan is not helping anyone. … If you deny the problem, we cannot find a solution for it.”
This article is part of a collaboration between Teens in Print and Consequence Forum to highlight the effects of war on people. For more stories like this, visit: Consequence Forum.
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