Central and South Asia

Revisiting an Afghan girls’ school

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In part 3 of his series on the Taliban, Charles Sennott travels to Afghanistan to try to revisit a girls school he reported on two years ago. The school was set up by an American couple who lost their son on September 11, 2001. But the school they funded in his memory now appears to be under the control of the Taliban. Listen

Inside the Taliban

A mother’s grief: Charles Sennott’s 2007 story

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LAURA LYNCH: In Afghanistan, schools for girls lie directly on the front lines of the war against the Taliban. Almost every week, girls’ schools are bombed and burned. The Taliban oppose education for girls as un-Islamic. And under the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001 girls weren’t permitted to attend school in Afghanistan. Now girls schools are allowed, but they don’t all have access to education, especially those who live in areas controlled by the Taliban. In part three of our series, Charles Sennott travels to Afghanistan to try to revisit a girls school that he reported on a couple years ago. It was set up by an American couple.

[SOUND CLIP]

CHARLES SENNOTT: That’s Sally Goodrich in April 2007 as she waved goodbye to a girls’ school in Logar Province, just outside Kabul. I was with Sally on that visit, the first time she had seen the school in session, and I witnessed the optimism in the young girls’ faces, which were framed by their white headscarfs. They were devout Muslims, at last getting the education they deserved. It was only two years ago, but it was a very different time, a time when hope seemed to outweigh fear.

SALLY GOODRICH: I hate to leave. Oh my gosh, this country has to stay safe. We hope for the good.

CHARLES SENNOTT: Sally did more than hope for good, she raised some 400 thousand dollars to build this school in honor of her son, Peter. He was killed on September 11th, aboard the second plane that struck the world trade center.  Sally’s a schoolteacher from Vermont, and for five years she and her husband Don have developed a close bond with this small village in the Mohammed Agha district where she’s come to think of the village elder, or “malik,” and his clan as family. They supported her in her efforts to build the school. She says the village leaders, Haji Malik and his brother Khadel Khan, and the students who attend the school have given her her life back after the loss of her son.

SALLY GOODRICH: Everything that Khadel Khan and Haji Malik did was antithetical to the Taliban regime which preceded the invasion by Americans. When I was there, we were there, it was a moment of hope and expectation.

CHARLES SENNOTT: But in March this year, the village was raided by the US Military in the dead of night. Haji Malik and Khadel Khan, along with the other men in their families were bundled off to a prison at the Bagram airbase where they were fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated.  US Military officials say the Taliban is in control of the village, and that it was using the school to hold meetings at night. The US Military found a cache of weapons there including assault rifles, landmines, and material to make roadside bombs. Haji Malik was released, but his son and brother, Khadel Khan, are still being held for allegedly providing support to the Taliban.

SALLY GOODRICH: I didn’t believe the news. I thought that it was just a classic error. It wasn’t that I couldn’t conceive of them accommodating the Taliban, I could conceive of that. The idea that, that they have completely sold out. I mean, how does that work Charlie? You know, I mean, it just doesn’t fit in my brain.

CHARLES SENNOTT: Sally and Don flew to Afghanistan. At that point, they were certain the US had based the arrests on flawed intelligence, but then they sat down with Brigadier General Michael Ryan. He spread the classified intelligence documents and evidence before them. Don and Sally left convinced that the Afghan men they had come to know as friends were indeed complicit with the Taliban.

SALLY GOODRICH: I’m getting up from the table, leaning toward and I said, you know, “These men have given me back my life.” And he was leaning toward me and said, “And they are taking the lives of my troops. They are taking the lives of my men.” And then, and you know what? That was, so where am I? I am in a position where I cannot have contact, cannot support the school for the moment, this moment in time, and maybe never again because I am an American. You know, that’s why peter was killed on that plane. You know, I am who I am, they are who they are, we all get to make our decisions, and we have to live with them. But, you know, there’s great, there’s great loss for me, for them. I just don’t see anybody coming out a winner in this, just not at all.

CHARLES SENNOTT: The logar province has become extraordinarily dangerous. On the main road into the province, a reporter for the New York Times was kidnapped and escaped last month after seven months of captivity. Four Western Aid workers have been killed on that road. Four girls’ schools burned in just a few months. It was a no go zone for Sally and me, but I had to know if the girls’ school was open, so I hired a local cameraman to shoot video of the school.

[SOUND CLIP]

CHARLES SENNOTT: The footage showed a trickle of students filing in in the early morning, about 20 percent of the students who had been there two years earlier. The principal, we were told, had been facing death threats and was not there on this day. I managed to reach village elder, Haji Malik by phone and arrange a meeting in Kabul to challenge him with the evidence that he and his family had collaborated with the Taliban.

HAJI MALIK: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] I am a Muslim, I’m proud of it, but I’m not a Talib. In the eye of Americans probably, I look like a Talib, [LAUGHS] but I’m not, we are not. And, this is a conspiracy from our enemy, they are trying to damage us.

CHARLES SENNOTT: In a long interview, Haji Malik insisted the US Military was duped with false information by enemies of the family who resent that they have built the girl’s school. He insisted his son and brother are innocent.

HAJI MALIK: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] Talibans are narrow-minded people, they don’t believe in the freedom for women, they don’t believe in education, they don’t believe in development. They cannot deliver services. We need rules, we need clinics, we need schools. Sixteen of our female kids are going to this school, and they are taking classes in this school [INDISCERNIBLE]. So how can I take sides with the Taliban who are against this?

CHARLES SENNOTT: The more I delved into the layers of this story, the more confusing it became. It seemed possible that Haji Malik’s brother and son had undertaken a classically Afghan deal. They would support the Taliban in order to keep the girls school open. For Autallah Wahajir, the deputy minister of education, it’s a plausible explanation.

AUTALLAH WAHAJIR: Yeah, yeah it happens in many provinces. It happens that the Maliks, the community people, they go to Taliban and say, “Look, we know you have a problem, we know you are going to fight, we know you are doing all those things, but we don’t care. We want our children to be educated. So you help us in that, in response, we are not going to create problems for you. You do your own business. But let our children get education.

CHARLES SENNOTT: Wahajir had been exiled from his country by the Taliban, his younger brother kidnapped by them and held for ransom. He calls the Taliban who attack schools “worse than animals.” And yet he believes Malik could be right in striking a deal with them, if it means keeping the girls schools open.

AUTALLAH WAHAJIR: Even if he is a Talib, even if he is keeping Talib in his home, even if his son is Talib, the positive aspect is that at least they are convinced that girl’s education is important. And if all Taliban agree to this, then at least we will have education free of politics. We will be able to establish girl’s schools everywhere in this country. So that is the positive aspect of it, and we will encourage all Talibs to do that.

CHARLES SENNOTT: Female literacy in Afghanistan stands at a staggeringly low five percent, and education is the future for the country. No one believes that more than Sally Goodrich and her husband Don, but both felt the school they funded should close for now. They couldn’t have known how prescient were their words.  The next morning, Sally and Don awoke to news of a horrific bombing in Logar on the road into the school. It was just last week and 25 people were reported killed, including 13 elementary school students. It’s believed that all of the young victims were from the families that attend the school. Don and sally were devastated, and for don, it was another example of the difficult challenges in Afghanistan.

DON: Our strategy in Afghanistan is on the brink of failure if it hasn’t already failed. Then we had a huge opportunity that we felt that we were a part of. And the surging towards a different life for the Afghan people is gone. And I think it’s gone because we did not understand the culture, we did not stand by some of the promises that we made. And I don’t think we understand who to trust. And, you know, whether we can pull it back is doubtful to me.

CHARLES SENNOTT: I thought of the school and the families and the students and how they’d get on after the bombing. Inside the principal’s office, there is still a photograph of Peter, the Goodrich’s son, and a copy of the Koran he studied and marked with post-it notes. Peter was a software engineer, but had a passion for studying religion and understanding all faiths.

SALLY GOODRICH: Peter approached all religions with this very open minded, non-judgmental, all inclusive,  “I want to formulate my own sense of spirituality and I want to take what is good from Christianity, from Judaism and even from Islam.” And you know what? I feel the same way now. [LAUGHS] I mean, really there is much that is good in Islam. I’m not gonna let the Taliban interpret Islam. And it would be a grave mis-justice to Islam.”

CHARLES SENNOTT: For the world, this is Charles Sennnott, Kabul.

LAURA LYNCH: You can heard Charles Sennott’s original report on that girl’s school at the-world-dot-org. That’s also the place to find pictures of the school and more information about our series on the Taliban. Tomorrow Charles Sennott wraps up our series by talking to former Taliban leaders. He also reports on the US Military struggle to understand the Taliban.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there’s an Achilles  heel on our so called Psyop  information operation strategy, it’s our misunderstanding of religion, I think, as Americans were hesitant to get into it, and when we do get into it, it seems to backfire.

LAURA LYNCH: Our series on the Taliban is a co-production with global-post-dot-com.

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