Bad news from northern Afghanistan: over eighty schoolgirls in the Kunduz province — a region where militants openly oppose the education of women — fell sick after they were exposed to a strange smell in their classrooms. This happened in three schools within a couple of miles of each other — nobody died, and the Health Ministry is conducting blood tests to try to figure out what happened.
In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, girls were not allowed to go to school, period. This has changed, but the extreme right’s opposition to the education of girls is no secret; in 2008, for example, 15 students and teachers were sprayed with acid as they walked to their school in Kandahar. The effects of this type of terror act tend to ripple outwards; a lot of parents who were not directly affected by these incidents hear about them and decide it’s not worth the risk, and keep their girls at home.
Afghan schoolgirls ‘poisoned’ [Al Jazeera]