Sociology PhD Student Ferdouse Asefi at the University of Toronto was recently published in The Hamilton Spectator. Asefi’s opinion article “The Betrayal of Afghanistan” brings light to the governmental response to the fall of Afghanistan. The full article is available on ‘The Hamilton Spectator’ website here.
An excerpt of the article is below:
“122 days. That’s how long it’s been since the takeover and occupation of Afghanistan by extremists. Since then, Afghanistan’s education, health, banking and security systems have collapsed. There is no money. There is no safety. We are witnessing one of the world’s largest and continuing economic crisis. According to United Nations Development Programme, it’s “the worst humanitarian disaster we’ve ever seen.”
A generation of Afghans born and raised with partial democracy, human rights, women’s participation and freedom of speech are collectively imprisoned under a fundamentalist oppressive regime. While the international community oscillates between their indifference and abandonment of Afghanistan, Afghans continue to suffer from violence and subjugation. This will have generational consequences.”
Ferdouse Asefi is a 4th year PhD Student specializing in crime and law, race and ethnicity. His dissertation is “The Graveyard of Life: Experiencing Afghanistan through the Afghan-Canadian Diaspora”. His dissertation research looks at the Afghan diaspora in Canada, focusing on the experiences of Afghan refugees during different periods of migration to Canada and second-generation Afghans. In addition, he examines the media representations of Afghans and how they resist orientalist understandings of Afghanistan and Afghans. His faculty supervisor is Luisa Schwartzman, with Ellen Berrey as a dissertation committee member. Ferdouse has other op-eds published in CBC, Toronto Star, and the Hamilton Spectator.