A thought worth pondering from The Courier-Mail yesterday - the withdrawal of foreign countries from Afghanistan may endanger recent gains in the number of girls receiving education there.
Here is an excerpt from the article, "Girls' education threatened in Afghanistan":
"The number of girls in education has risen from 5000 in 2001 when the Taliban were ousted, to 2.4 million today, although many do not attend regularly and are forced to drop out early, the study from groups including Oxfam said...
"...Abdul Waheed Hamidy of Afghan NGO Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance added: 'It's crucial that donor governments sustain their support for development, especially education, even once their troops leave the country.'"
The plight of girls under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was memorably depicted by Khaled Hosseini in his acclaimed and engrossing novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns.
As we well know, education is an important stimulus for change, and it would be terrible to see a return to the days when the Taliban actively attacked schools and persecuted young women who wanted an education.
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