American University in Kabul: Wielding soft power, in an age of war
After gunmen stormed the American University of Afghanistan campus one night in August 2016, Mohammad Anil Qasemi found himself on a second-story window ledge, ready to jump.
The AUAF student never had the chance: An attacker tossed a grenade, and the explosion threw Mr. Qasemi to the ground with a shrapnel wound to the head and a multitude of broken bones.
As he lay there wounded, the student could not shake earlier words of warning from his father about attending the university: “Don’t go there, because the name ‘American’ itself is a danger.”
Mr. Qasemi survived, first outwitting Taliban insurgents who searched three times for him that night, and later enduring seven surgeries.
But the attack, which killed 13 people at the American-funded institution, points to the incongruous challenge for the United States of creating a top-flight university in Afghanistan, designed to produce future leaders, while at the same time waging the longest war in U.S. history.
Straddling that contradiction – of establishing
‘Power of education’Management issuesDilemma for familiesBeyond American University
