All-Girl Afghan STEM Team Denied Visa, Robot Gets Greenlight

A team of six Afghan girls was refused U.S. visas to attend an international robotics competition in Washington D.C.

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The young women had taken a risky 500-mile trek across the conflict-ridden country – from Herat to Kabul – in a bid to secure visas to travel to the inaugural FIRST Global Challenge in the United States.

The group had also faced a setback with the raw materials used to assemble the robot, when it was held by customs for months, amid fears it could end up in the hands of ISIS and used in terror attacks.

According to a Forbes report, the all-female robotics team was denied a one-week visa, but, the robot — which the girls assembled — would be allowed into the United States.

The teenagers — who had hoped to accompany their ball-sorting robot — “were crying all the day” after they were denied entry, Afghanistan’s first female tech CEO, Roya Mahboob, said.

“It’s a very important message for our people,” Mahboob added. “Robotics is very, very new in Afghanistan.”

The event is an Olympics-style international robots competition that encourages high school students with different backgrounds, languages, religions, and customs to pursue STEM.

Afghanistan is not on U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban list.

Notably, teams from Sudan and Syria, both on the ban list, were granted visas.

The U.S. State Department declined to comment.

Data show that very few visas are granted to Afghan nationals, only 112 were issued in May 2017, compared with 780 to Iraqis – which was on the initial ban list, but later removed.