KABUL, 31 March 2005 — US First Lady Laura Bush flew to Afghanistan yesterday to praise the country’s women as they struggle for the right to education more than three years after the fall of the repressive Taleban.
former schoolteacher and librarian unveiled a series of multimillion dollar US-funded projects to promote women’s learning, saying they would help secure the war-scarred nation’s path to democracy.
Laura’s lightning visit to the capital Kabul came hours after a suicide bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, underlining the continuing threat posed by the hard-line Taleban which was overthrown by US-led forces in late 2001.
“It’s an extraordinary privilege to celebrate the incredible progress made by the Afghan people over the last few years, with women now being teachers, doctors, businesswomen and ministers,” she told a gathering of Afghan women at Kabul University.
“The terror when they were denied their rights by tyranny has been replaced by a young democracy with equal rights.” The Taleban, who ruled most of Afghanistan with an iron fundamentalist hand from 1996 to late 2001, outlawed education for women and forced them to wear all-covering burqas.
The first lady, whose husband has never visited Afghanistan, was warmly welcomed by around 400 women including teachers and officials as she opened an all-female dormitory project at the start of her five-hour visit. Young girls in green, gold and red traditional dress clutched bouquets of flowers for the first lady while she spoke to members of the crowd.
Laura Bush said Washington was to spend $80 million on education in Afghanistan in coming years. She announced a $17.7-million grant for a new American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, $3.5 million for the international elementary school of Afghanistan and five million dollars for a women’s teacher training institute.
In many traditional Afghan families, parents or husbands still refuse to allow their daughters or spouses to go to school unless they have all-female teaching staff and are equipped with separate dormitories.
