{"id":7145,"date":"2017-02-10T13:06:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T11:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=7145"},"modified":"2017-02-10T13:15:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T11:15:32","slug":"the-millennials-of-afghanistan-have-never-known-a-world-without-war-so-why-are-these-kids-so-hopeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2017\/02\/the-millennials-of-afghanistan-have-never-known-a-world-without-war-so-why-are-these-kids-so-hopeful\/","title":{"rendered":"THE MILLENNIALS OF AFGHANISTAN HAVE NEVER KNOWN A WORLD WITHOUT WAR. SO WHY ARE THESE KIDS SO HOPEFUL?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source:<\/span>narratively<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Photos by Kiana Hayeri<\/a> | Text by Sophie Brill<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

SEE GREAT PHOTOS here<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Death and destruction is always just around the corner here, yet many young Afghans are focused on the future, diving headfirst into everything from education and activism to rapping and rock.<\/p>\n

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\"Photos<\/p>\n

M<\/span>illennials are roughly defined as those born between the years 1980 and 2001. In Afghanistan, this definition carries an added layer of significance, as these years are the bookends of two particularly catastrophic periods of conflict: 1980, the first year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and 2001, marking the beginning of the U.S. invasion and the War on Terror. Millennials in Afghanistan have only known a time in which their country has been in a constant state of war.<\/p>\n

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In spite of their chaotic upbringing, or perhaps because of it, many millennials in Afghanistan are extraordinarily resilient, even hopeful, about their country\u2019s future. They are better educated than any past generation: according to the Afghan Central Statistics Organization<\/a>, public university enrollment jumped from 7,800 to 174,425 between 2001 and 2015 \u2013 21 percent of that enrollment being women. Although many still long to leave Afghanistan in search of opportunities elsewhere, others resolutely remain, choosing to engage with their communities and the outside world through art, music, and activism \u2013 from within the country they know and love.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future of Afghanistan is going to be very bright,\u201d says Zhala Sarmast, seventeen, a member of a groundbreaking Afghan women\u2019s cycling group that biked across the country to promote female independence and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize this year. \u201cI know the youngsters of my country are strong enough to rebuild Afghanistan, and to show the world that Afghanistan is much more than what they think.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many millennials in Afghanistan are extraordinarily resilient, even hopeful. \u201cThe future of Afghanistan is going to be very bright,\u201d says Zhala Sarmast, 17, a member of groundbreaking women\u2019s cycling group that biked across the country to promote female independence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,20,90,17],"tags":[284,602],"class_list":["post-7145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-culture-and-literature","category-editor-selection","category-women","tag-afghanistan-youth","tag-culture-and-arts","country-afghanistan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7145"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7149,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions\/7149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}