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Fulbright Applicants in Afghanistan Seek Help
Afghan semifinalists for next year's Fulbright scholars' program are asking the U.S. government about the status of their candidacies, following the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as American troops withdrew from Afghanistan in August.
"After the fall of Kabul on August 15, we did not hear back from the U.S. State Department on the Fulbright program regarding the status of our applications," said Maryam Jami, a law school graduate and applicant from Herat, referring to the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital on that date.
The Fulbright Foreign Student Program "enables graduate students, young professionals and artists from abroad to study and conduct research in the United States," according to the program's website, which says about 4,000 foreign students are awarded a scholarship each year.
The prestigious awards offer educational opportunities at little cost, through the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, in conjunction with the Institute of International Education, which is headquartered in New York. The scholars teach or do research for one year or longer.
Jami, who said she wants to study for her master's degree in law in the U.S. through the Fulbright program, said applicants have reached out to the program to no avail. The last week of August, "they sent us an official email stating that they are going to inform us in the coming weeks," she said.
VOA this week reached out to a State Department official who responded that the agency is aware of the applicants' worries.
"We are tracking events in Afghanistan closely and are reviewing the future of the Fulbright program. We are committed to the aspirations of Afghan students and scholars," the statement said.
"This fall, we have welcomed onto U.S. campuses the largest cohort ever of Fulbright students from Afghanistan. We appreciate the continued interest of next year's semi-finalists in study in the United States. We know that this is a challenging time for these Afghan students and their families. Interviews were postponed from June to September due to staffing and logistical constraints presented by the COVID pandemic."
With the U.S. Embassy in Kabul closed, the official web page for the diplomatic mission shows an error message.
The State Department has canceled its Fulbright program in the past for safety reasons, such as when a country has experienced turmoil, after the candidates are selected. At such times, the scholarships were rescinded, and the finalists had to reapply if they wanted to pursue the Fulbright again.
The program has also been cut short because of COVID-19. U.S. Fulbright students had the option of returning to the U.S. or remaining in their host countries during the 2020 pandemic.
Applicants said their hopes to leave Afghanistan to participate in the Fulbright program feel shaken.
"If the Department of State and the Fulbright program do not reply to my request and don't hold an interview, I do not have any future," said Farhad Ehsani from Kabul. Ehsani said this is his second time applying for the program.
"I will migrate to Pakistan, Iran or some other country because if I stay in Afghanistan, I will not have a good future," he said.
Esmatullah Muslim from Kandahar applied for an environmental management program in the U.S.
"The Fulbright scholarship program is an educational program, and it should not be politicized, or it should not be political. We demand that it should continue as normal, as well as for the following year," he said.
"The situation is really heartbreaking, especially for women, because we are denied education now in Afghanistan," Jami said. "Girls do not have access to even secondary education after elementary school. They cannot continue. They must stay home. We thought the international community will help us. … We all have plans for Afghanistan, and we want to pursue those plans through education."
Niamatullah Sayed received a bachelor's degree in law and wants to pursue a master's in banking and finance. He said the semifinalists are awaiting word from the State Department.
"We have given our high efforts and waited a long time. We deserve to be interviewed," he said. "We know that as of now, we do not have official governmental relations with the U.S., but this is an academic and cultural exchange program that shall not be affected by political relations.
"We are potential future leaders of our country in our respective fields. We will be guiding our homeland towards prosperity and development considering international standards," Sayed told VOA. "Therefore, the State Department should not cancel the program, because it isn't the solution."
The Afghan Fulbright semifinalists for 2022 have also launched a hashtag on Twitter to call attention to the issue. #supportafgfulbrightsemifinalists2022
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
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