Poisoned or petrified?
MAY 23 started out much like any other day at the government- run Bibi Hajira girls’ school. In contrast with other parts of Afghanistan, life tends to be relatively tranquil here in Taloqan, the capital of the northern border province of Takhar.
But at about 7.30am, as the girls of class 12A were taking an early- morning break, their classmate Seddiqa, the principal’s daughter, walked into the room and fainted. Her friends managed to catch her before she hit the floor.
Then another girl collapsed. Students in other classrooms began saying they felt dizzy. Someone said something about poison gas, and teachers and students began to panic. “Cover your noses, girls,” the teachers shouted as everyone fled outside.
By midmorning, dozens of ailing girls were stretched out in the courtyard while medical teams, police, and reporters swarmed through the school.
“I felt my nose burning and a strong headache,” a teenager named Qarema told Newsweek. “I sat down, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.”
Before the day was over, 127 of the school’s roughly 1,200 students had been taken to the hospital, complaining of fainting, dizziness, and anxiety. Most recovered and were released within hours, but authorities were convinced the girls had been poisoned.
It wasn’t the first time, they said: In April 161 girls had fallen ill at another high school in the same province. Local officials accused the Taliban of poisoning the school’s well. The Taliban denied it, but what can you expect from the kind of men who have burned down scores of girls’ schools in recent years?
Six days after the Bibi Hajira incident, 39 girls fell ill at another school in the city. Three days after that, 95 students at yet another school were hospitalised.
Fear swept the province. Parents kept their daughters home, armed guards were posted at the schools every night, and nervous students took turns searching each other every morning. But the incidents continued. Between April and June, seven schools and more than 1,000 girls reported the same symptoms.
Things finally came to a head on Jun 6. Afghanistan’s equivalent of the FBI, the National Directorate of Security, announced the arrests of 15 suspects in the incidents, including two 17-year-old Taloqan schoolgirls: One called Shukria and the other Seema Gul.
At a high-profile press conference attended by Takhar officials and members of the national media, the NDS distributed videotapes of some suspects’ purported confessions. According to the NDS, Shukria and Seema Gul were paid the equivalent of $1,000 (€820) each to release poison in their schools. One of the videos shows Seema Gul, a Bibi Hajira student, sitting in a dimly lit room as she tells how an alleged Taliban agent coerced her into poisoning her classmates.
“I was followed by Mullah Najib to my school, and he gave me a pot and threatened he would kill or kidnap me,” she says, her voice hoarse and frantic. “I had to do it.”
But did she actually commit such a crime? Medical investigators tell Newsweek they have no evidence that anyone was poisoned at any of the schools in question. In fact, the UN and the World Health Organization have been probing such alleged mass poisonings in Afghanistan since 2009.
According to official sources and confidential documents obtained by Newsweek, their researchers have never found any actual toxins despite extensive lab tests.
The UN and WHO reports, which have never been made public, say the victims in these cases have exhibited none of the symptoms typically associated with poisoning, such as vomiting, internal organ damage, or bloody diarrhea. What’s more, no deaths have been recorded among the thousands of Afghan schoolgirls who have complained of mysterious ailments. The victims usually recover quickly enough to leave the hospital the same day.
“More than 200 samples (blood, urine, and water from the source) have so far been collected,” a WHO spokesperson said in an email. “No conclusive evidence of deliberate poisoning was found.”
On the contrary, investigators think the incidents have a very different cause. They point to the symptoms (anxiety, fainting, dizziness), the large numbers of sufferers in each incident, and the fact that almost all the victims are young women, while male staff members seem untouched. The conclusion is what doctors call “mass psychogenic illness”.
It’s a little-understood problem that has been documented across a range of cultures and historical periods — and not only in developing countries. For example, medical experts believed it to be responsible for a mysterious “twitching illness” that afflicted a group of cheerleaders in the town of Le Roy, New York, in January.
A single individual’s condition can set off a cascade of ailments. Take the original Takhar incident, back in April, in which 161 girls were supposedly sickened by something in the school’s well. Samples of the water were sent to a Nato laboratory in Kabul, but no traces of poison were found.
Instead, according to medical officials in Takhar and Kabul, “Patient Zero” turned out to be a girl suffering from epilepsy. She apparently experienced a seizure while fetching water from the school’s well, and her sudden illness triggered mass panic.
Doctors in Taloqan seem relatively unworried by the recent incidents. Dr Sayed Abed at Takhar’s provincial hospital, says he has treated hundreds of cases in the past few months. “We just give them an IV [drip] and send them home when they feel better,” he says. “In the more severe cases, we give them diazepam [a generic version of the anti-anxiety drug Valium].” His colleague Dr Noor Moshaiq speaks up: “It’s a psychological disorder.”
A psychiatrist, Moshaiq is one of only two mental-health professionals in the entire province. At his bustling office in central Taloqan, Dr Hafizullah Safi, the provincial head of public health, is more circumspect. “It’s true that we don’t have any evidence of poison. But now the NDS has released videotapes of these people confessing.” He raises his hands helplessly. “What can I say?”
The members of Seema Gul’s family have plenty to say about her purported confession. They say it’s absurd to accuse Seema Gul of accepting $1,000 from the Taliban to poison her classmates. “What did she do with the money?” her uncle Islamuddin demands. “This girl did not even have the courage to speak in front of her teacher.” Her mother, Farzana, says the girl could never have done such a thing. “Her sisters are in that school,” says Farzana. “She herself fell ill.” They bring out the “medicine” prescribed for the supposed poisoning victims: A packet of Glaxose-D sweetener and vitamin powder.
A medical official tells Newsweek that Afghan higher-ups have been briefed at the ministerial level on the results of the UN and WHO investigations of supposed poisonings. Nevertheless, the authorities are continuing to pursue the poisoning cases, regardless of the objections of medical experts and international officials. “They [Afghan politicians and bureaucrats] went beyond the pale, using schoolgirls,” said one international official familiar with the case. “My fear is that if they get away with this, they’ll keep using the poisonings issue all over the country. It’s brilliant politics, really.”
Despite Taliban leaders’ vehement denials of any school poisonings, some Taliban fighters are said to believe the videotaped confessions and consider themselves disgraced.
“They’re saying, ‘We’ve lost our name because of this’,” says a village elder.
Meanwhile, girls’ schools all across the north are reporting more mass-poisoning alarms. Some 300 students have been affected in three separate incidents in Sar-e Pol province, and last week a supposed outbreak at a school in Jowzjan province temporarily felled more than 100 girls. Authorities in both provinces blamed the Taliban.
At Bibi Hajira, the trauma continues to resound, no less real despite knowing that it’s psychological. “If the weather gets hot or we smell cooking gas, we get sick,” says Qarema, the girl who spoke of waking up in the hospital. “I’m very forgetful now,” she said as she spoke to Newsweek in the principal’s office. “I can’t remember my lessons.” There have been repeat incidents almost every day since May 23, with girls relapsing into the same symptoms of dizziness, headaches, and fainting.
As Qarema talks, 15-year-old Manizha is brought up from class, her face pale and drawn. When a teacher asked her what was wrong, she answered, “I can’t stop weeping.” And who can blame her?
* Matthieu Aikins is a journalist based in South Asia
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