afghanistan all girl robotics team won't be allowed to come to the u.s.

It's not easy to get robotics equipment through customs in Afghanistan, but that didn't deter this plucky bunch.

For months, a team of six teenage girls has been scrambling to build a ball-sorting robot that will compete in an international competition. Other teams received their raw materials in March. But the box sent from America had been held up for months amid concerns about terrorism. So the young engineers improvised, building motorized machines from household materials.
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The Afghan girls are not alone. On Tuesday, the leader of a robotics team from the West African nation of Gambia announced that they too had been denied visas to enter the United States. Mucktarr M.Y. Darboe, a Higher Education ministry director, told the Associated Press that no reason was given for the visa denials in April. Gambia is a largely Muslim nation. AP could not immediately reach anyone at the U.S. Embassy in Banjul for comment.

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Tidewater said:

My adblocker won't let me view the WaPo site. I refuse to remove adblocker for the WaPo (the "quaint alternative newspaper from DC").
So, is that the story? The US Customs Service will not let improvised home-modified electronics into the US from Afghanistan (where an American soldier was killed today, by the way)? In the current international situation, I can live with that. I hear Germany is open for such cases.
If the US Customs Service did announce that improvised home-modified electronics from Afghanistan would be allowed into the US, might ISIS or Al Qaeda take advantage of that information?

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Tidewater said:

I read the novel when I lived in Israel.
Palestinians send pregnant woman to border check point with Israel. Israeli soldiers deny them entry. International outrage ensues. Israelis relent and announced that pregnant Palestinian women who need medical attention in Israel will be let in. Palestinians then send "pregnant" woman (actually wearing a suicide bomb) to the checkpoint, knowing the Israelis will let her in. Boom.

I'm okay with not letting these Afghan women's improvised electronics into the country. On the other hand, maybe you could volunteer to check out their electronics in Kabul before its shipped. Kabul is lovely this time of year.

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