‘We should be scared’: the poisoning of schoolgirls in Afghanistan

Dozens of schoolgirls are suspected to have been deliberately poisoned in two attacks in Afghanistan, the latest in a decade of incidents in the region, intensifying fears for girls pursuing education.

On 3 June, 63 students and staff members at Naswan-e-Kabod Aab primary school for girls in northern Sar-e-Pul province fell ill shortly after arriving in the morning and were hospitalised with neurological and respiratory symptoms. The following day students and staff at Naswan-e-Faizabad girls’ school nearby reported similar symptoms; the numbers affected vary from 17, according to Associated Press, to 26, quoted by The New York Times (NYT).

Officials are “unclear on the culprit, the motive and the potential type of poison possibly used”, Mohammad Rahmani, head of the education department in the northern province, told CNN.

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The UN children’s charity Unicef has called on the Taliban government of Afghanistan to investigate and “do everything possible to keep girls and women safe”, reported Kabul Now.

The suggestion of deliberate poisoning “rattled young girls and their parents in this region of Afghanistan”, said the NYT. The ban on girls’ education after primary level has become “a flashpoint” since the Taliban retook power in August 2021 and “effectively erased” women from public life.

‘Everyone is scared’

Over the past two decades in Afghanistan, there have been multiple supposed poisonings and mass hospitalisations of schoolgirls, which the previous government generally blamed on the Taliban.

In 2009, hundreds of schoolgirls at three schools in Kapisa province, north of Kabul, needed treatment in the space of two weeks. Then in 2010, more than 80 schoolgirls were taken ill in three separate incidents in northern Afghanistan.

In 2012, at least 140 schoolgirls were treated after drinking poisoned water, which health officials blamed on extremists opposed to women’s education. The next month, hundreds of girls and teachers in two schools in northern Takhar province were hospitalised in the same week after being “seemingly poisoned with a toxic spray”, said CNN.

In 2015, about 600 girls were suspected of having been poisoned in Herat by toxic gas.

“Everyone is scared, and we should be scared,” Hassan Haidari, whose daughter, a teacher in Naswan-e-Kabod Aab school, is in a serious condition, told the NYT. “People want to know who did this to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Otherwise, no one will send their daughter to school.”

‘Complete disregard for women’s rights’

In just a year, the Taliban has reversed nearly two decades of progress for women’s rights in Afghanistan. It has brought back the infamous “burqa mandate”, prohibiting women from entering public spaces like parks and banning them from working in most industries. Women also cannot travel without a male chaperone.

Girls can no longer attend secondary school, and last December women were barred from universities after they became centres of dissent against the crackdowns.

Those protesting have also been arrested, tortured or “forcibly disappeared”, according to an Amnesty International report.

This year, the Taliban banned female UN workers, leading to a statement by the UK ambassador at the UN Security Council, calling it “a direct violation of the core tenets underpinning the UN charter” that would impede the delivery of aid.

“We have a pandemic of suicidal thoughts in Afghanistan,” a psychologist told BBC News, describing a mental health crisis particularly prevalent among girls and women. “The situation is the worst ever.”

Bioterrorism, revenge or mass psychogenesis?

In neighbouring Iran, “poisoning incidents at girls’ schools sickened an estimated 13,000 mostly female students since November”, said the Daily Mail. Hundreds have been hospitalised in what officials said could have been deliberate attacks.

The incidents “have similarities” with the cases in Afghanistan in the 2010s, chemical weapons expert Dan Kaszeta, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told BBC News. Psychological factors could have contributed to both, although he did not rule out the use of toxic substances.

The supposed poisonings in Iran could be a case of “mass sociogenic illness”, said Professor Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at King’s College London. They are “very reminiscent” of the so-called fainting epidemic in the West Bank in 1986 that is now believed to have been largely psychosomatic and stress-induced.

A report published in Psychology Today in March suggested that cases in both countries may have been psychogenic in nature, driven by anxiety. Or they are “bioterrorism”, according to the Iranian Teachers’ Union’s Coordination Council statement in March.

Despite condemnation by supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who declared it an “unforgivable crime”, some politicians have suggested “the poisonings may have been carried out by religious groups opposed to educating girls”, said DW.

Some activists believe the attacks to be a form of “revenge” for the protests that erupted following the suspicious death of 22-year-old Masha Amini in September 2022, said The Guardian, in the custody of the Iranian “morality police”.

“Nobody believes that it is coincidence that it has followed the protests,” Deepa Parent, a human rights journalist, told the paper.