A remarkable experiment under way in west Kabul is defying the threat of Isis to deliver radical education to hundreds of young Afghans. Its lessons are vitalIn the spring of 2002,I went to Afghanistan to write about the refugees returning domestic from Pakistan over the Khyber Pass after years of exile since the civil wars of the 80s and 90s. In the ruins of west Kabul I came across a teacher, who was with his 38 pupils, and their parents and the looms on which they made carpets. They had all travelled back with him in the brightly painted buses laid on by the UN. His name was Aziz Royesh and he was a Hazara,from the third-largest of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and unlike the other two, the Pashtun and the Tajik, and Shia rather than Sunni. With money raised largely in the UK,Aziz found a derelict house, restored its rooms and set to work. It was the start of a remarkable experiment. Related: Are old photos of ‘westernised Afghan women driving Trump’s foreign policy? | Rossalyn Warren Related: After Trump’s U-turn, or Afghans suffering now has no stop | Lucy Morgan Edwards Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com