As Americans digest the news and images coming out of Afghanistan, we must grapple with the critical questions being raised about our nation’s place in the world. Underneath these issues of policy and national strategy lie the individual stories of bravery, of people trying to build a life and a future. The stories are what makes this such an incredible human disaster, regardless of your views on our military’s presence on the ground. Greg Jenkins, our co-executive director, shares such a story from his time in Afghanistan in the early 2000s.
The bravest person I’ve ever known was a teacher. As we in America argue endlessly and loudly about what should and shouldn’t be taught in our schools, there are places in the world where teaching is a death sentence.
In 2001, within weeks of the Taliban defeat, Benesh Ahmadi [name changed to protect her identity] emerged from her home without a burka and unescorted by a man for the first time in five years. She marched down the winding, cobbled street, head held high, to the bombed out secondary school she had run years before and claimed it for the children on the hillside. She let parents know that school was open — for boys AND girls — and that once she could find some willing teachers, it was again time to learn.
It was a very cold December day as I met with Benesh in her office. There was no heat and there would be no heat. There was no glass in any of the windows. Half of one exterior wall was gone, having been taken out by a rocket propelled grenade at some point. What walls that did remain were mud bricks. The floor was dirt. The roof was a few sticks. Her desk was a sheet of plywood balanced on a couple of crates. She waved me to sit as though absolutely nothing was amiss.
Benesh adjusted the white scarf that barely covered her jet black hair and then, with a weary smile, asked me what I wanted to know. Apart from the war-ravaged surroundings — that she utterly ignored — I could have been chatting with a teacher in Maine, Kansas or Colorado. “I have so many questions,” I started. “I’m not sure where to begin. I guess my first question is, ‘what did you do when the Taliban shut down your school five years ago?'”
In the mid 1990s the Taliban forbade women from teaching and forbade girls going to school past the age of eight. Many thousands of girls simply returned home and for five long years, did not learn how to read and write, much less learn mathematics, history or science.
So Benesh defiantly — secretly — continued to teach boys and girls in the back of her two-room house. For five years, she made sure that at least those children learned. She did this knowing that had she been found out on any one of those 1,800 days, she could have been beaten, hauled off to prison, or executed. She taught anyway.
When she reopened her school in 2001, starting from scratch meant much more than finding supplies and textbooks. She and her fellow teachers were confronted with an almost unimaginably difficult fact: more than 80 percent of Afghan youngsters couldn’t read or write, and illiteracy among girls was triple that of boys. Benesh and her colleagues got down to work.
She said that since children are the literal future to any society “they must be prepared to contribute and to participate.” Without education, she continued, “they and we have no hope.”
Once the parents on the hillside found out that the school had reopened, word spread. By the end of the second or third week, there were so many children coming to school that Benesh had to divide the day into three sessions to accommodate more than 3,000 children. Even with three shifts, her bombed out classrooms were filled beyond capacity. Classes were conducted in dirt alleyways and in the courtyard, in the hallways and under the only tree on the property next to a well. Textbooks were retrieved from their hiding places, but had to remain in school since there weren’t enough for everybody to take home.
I asked her if the children liked going to school or even understood the value of education. She said that was the wrong question. She took my hand, and led me to one of the classrooms where the children who could read were reading aloud in Pashto from the same book. Benesh asked her English-speaking colleague to explain what the class was reading.
“The children are reading a story about a young boy who keeps a bird in a cage. One night while sleeping, he dreamed that the bird came to him and asked him why he was keeping him in the cage. The bird tells him he wants to be free. The boy awakens crying as he realizes what he has done and he sets the bird free.”
“At my school,” Benesh said with justifiable pride, “these children are once again free.”
That’s all over now. Her school will almost certainly be shut down again. Women will be forbidden from teaching. Girls will be forbidden from learning.
And if Benesh is still teaching she is now a target. All in the name of education.
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Confused about how things unfolded in Afghanistan? Check out this piece on the timeline of the U.S. withdrawal.
Make Your Voice Heard
Yesterday, we caught up with Nathan Williams of People’s Town Hall and heard from him on how we can all stay alert, educated, and engaged in our communities.
Catch the replay here and tune in next Thursday on IG Live!
Read from Roll Call on what Members of Congress are likely thinking about this August recess, and what their priorities might be when they get back to Washington.