Afghanistan's female robotics team denied visas by US State Department
The girls were distraught after learning they will be unable to attend the FIRST Global Challenge
(Web Desk) - The US State Department has denied visas to all six members of Afghanistan’s female robotics team due to unclear reasons.
According to Forbes the girls had been trying to get one-week travel visas in order to accompany their robot to the inaugural FIRST Global Challenge ,an international robotics competition happening in Washington DC in mid-July.
The all-girl team, which was to represent the country in the competition, comes from Herat, a populous city in western Afghanistan. To get the visas the girls had to travel to Kabul, location of the American embassy, for the interviews. Journeys of any length have become highly dangerous in Afghanistan with the Taliban holding large swaths of territory across the country and insurgent attacks common across highways.
Nevertheless, the girls persisted in making the journey to the capital (that had recently bore the brunt of a truck bomb attack that had killed over 100) for their interviews.When their first attempt at getting visas was rejected they did not give up and made the risky trip again hoping that a second round of interviews with embassy officials would yield different results. However this hope too was quickly dashed when the second attempt was also met with rejection.
The team working on their machine. Photo courtesy: Mashable
While the State Department has yet not made any public comment as to why it rejected the visas recent figures show that it is becoming increasingly difficult to get travel visas from Afghanistan to the US.State Department records show that in the month of April 2017 the US gave out just 32 of the B1/B2 brand of business travel visas (the type the girls wanted) for Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Iraq got 138 B1/B2s issued during that same month while Pakistan got 1,492.These numbers indicate that getting visas for the team was a long shot. Still the girls tried their utmost to make the US trip possible.
Visa difficulties were not the only problem that the girls had to deal with. The raw materials for their robot were held up in customs for months this spring, due to security concerns over insurgent use of robots on the battlefield.To overcome this problem the team designed their own homemade motorized robotic machines while they waited for customs to clear their parts. Three weeks ago those parts finally cleared customs and the team got seriously started on building their machine with help from a few robotics grad students at Carnegie Mellon.
Now Team Afghanistan is working harder than ever because although they may not be able to attend the event (though the girls will be allowed a brief video conference to see their machine) they want to build a robot that their country can be proud of and one that can hopefully bring home a win.
