The deprived children who want a change
These children are coming from the most deprived background, from a Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan, who once were socially rejected due to their faith and ethnicity. They have been an outcast of Afghanistan, and have been singled out as outsiders, heretics, and ugly because of their Asiatic looks. In the 1890s, Abdul Rahman Khan, the Pashtun king and a Sunni muslim who fought against the Hazara people, branded the Hazaras as infidels. The king united all other Sunni tribes against Hazaras, the atrocity which had almost annihilated the Hazaras in Afghanistan. Sources say that almost 60% of the Hazara people were wiped out.
History repeats itself:
One hundreds years after, during the Taliban era, this cycle of massacre replayed. In 1998, the Mullah Niazi, (a Pashtun and Sunni Muslim) the governor of Balkh announced that the Hazaras are not Muslims, and gave them two choices: either convert into Islam (means to become Sunni Muslims), or leave Afghanistan. They didn’t leave, however, between 1998-2001, the Taliban killed almost 15,000 Hazaras in Balkh and Mazar-e Sharif.
Today, thanks to the presence of the United States and NATO’s troops that survived these children and their parents from the Taliban massacre. These kids though poor and don’t have the most basic needs for their schooling, they do not believe that poverty can hamper their education. This is the generation that will transform Afghanistan, for all and for all.