The Taliban have banned education for millions of girls in Afghanistan

Ayesha, an 18-year-old girl in Afghanistan, attends a secret school six days a week, mainly to continue seeing people outside her home. It’s the only way to avoid complete isolation under the Taliban regime, she says.

It’s the only way she feels alive.

“Without that connection,” she said, “I don’t know what would happen to me.”

Ayesha once dreamed of studying psychology at the university. The Taliban crushed that dream when they banned formal education for girls after sixth grade in 2022.

But Ayesha has been defying the Taliban’s rules for years, attending classes in a room hidden away in the back corridors of an elementary school.

Thousands of such programs operate throughout the country without the Taliban’s knowledge.

The secret schools were once considered a temporary solution, a way for girls to continue their education until the Taliban left.

However, five years later, the Taliban are still in power, and nearly 2.5 million girls in Afghanistan have been barred from secondary education.

They can attend religious schools or study at home with private tutors. However, across the country, girls are risking their lives by attending school in secret.

Others deliberately fail sixth grade so they can stay in school as long as possible.

Afghans continue to fight for their girls

Principals, teachers, and parents run the schools in secret, fighting for what they fear may be a lost cause: to save a generation of girls from illiteracy.

Taliban leaders show no sign of lifting the ban, even as some local officials tolerate the clandestine schools, fearing they might deprive their own daughters of an education.

In interviews conducted by The New York Times with more than 50 female students, teachers, therapists, and parents, many said they fear that a ban would cause lasting harm—to the girls and to Afghanistan’s social fabric.

However, even girls who complete their education have few prospects.

The Taliban have barred women from most jobs, and opportunities to go abroad are rare.

According to educators and humanitarian organizations, reports of suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and rates of child marriage are on the rise.

Despite all this, some girls refuse to give up their fight for an education.

“We are part of this society too,” said Ayesha.

“Just let us be who we want to be.”

The Secret Path

Recently, late one night, Ayesha received a message from her friend Zuhal, 17, who told her she wouldn’t be coming to class the next day.

Zuhal’s father had hit her, saying there was no point in attending a secret school.

Ayesha remembers crying as she read Zuhal’s message.

She said she prayed in her room and urged Zuhal to come back. “If you stay home, it’s all over for you,” Aisha told her. “No one else will do anything for you.”

Zuhal returned to school a few days later, but said she could only come when her father was away.

The secret classroom is hidden inside a public elementary school. The playground is filled with the voices of the younger students, and hundreds of tiny, colorful shoes are lined up at the building’s entrance.

However, beyond their classrooms, a door leads to a hidden passageway, which leads to the secret classroom for the older girls.

To avoid being spotted, the students vary their routes to school and avoid walking in groups.

Nevertheless, every now and then, the Taliban storm the school without warning, as happened one morning in July.

The principal locked the students inside, and 14 young women continued to write in silence.

The classroom remains unnoticed.

There was a time, as students and a teacher explained, when a Taliban inspection would send them running to hide in the basement, where they were locked away in the dark.

As the students have grown older, visits from the Taliban no longer frighten them as much. Many said they feel contempt for the group.

“Do they expect the country to develop by depriving half the population of an education?” said Palvasa, one of Ayesha’s classmates.

“We want nothing more than the basic rights that Islam has granted us.”

Only a tiny percentage of girls in Afghanistan can receive a secondary education through clandestine schools; even fewer, like Ayesha and Palvasa, follow an international curriculum and speak fluent English.

Palvasa wants to launch her own clothing brand. Ayesha knows she won’t be able to study psychology at a university in Afghanistan after she graduates, so she offers advice to her classmates.

This is the extent of Ayesha’s social life, and it will disappear in a few months.

There are no clandestine schools after 12th grade.

“Girls, you’re here now,” Ayesha recalled their teacher saying as they sat down for their midterm exams.

“But by this time next year, you’ll be home.”

Computer Science and Duolingo

The Taliban have taken credit for one success in the field of education: girls’ enrollment in elementary school rose from 78% in 2021 to 87% in 2024, according to UNESCO and UNICEF.

This is mainly due to the fact that daily security has improved throughout Afghanistan since the war ended with the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. Schools that had been closed have reopened, and crossing the street to get to class is no longer a daily danger.

However, the overall picture is alarming. Nine out of ten 10-year-olds cannot read a text appropriate for their age, according to UNESCO.

Only one in four Afghan women is literate. Girls who want to continue their education sometimes face additional obstacles from their families.

Laila, 21, enrolled two years ago in a clandestine school to study computer science and foreign languages, kilometers away from her home, in one of Afghanistan’s most conservative provinces. She said she threatened to commit suicide if her family wouldn’t let her attend.

Recently, one morning, she was taking computer science and Duolingo classes in a hidden 11th-grade classroom.

In the school’s dimly lit hallways, students walked silently past colorful displays about the human body and the solar system. Dozens more were studying in the basement library.

Laila and hundreds of other girls take in-person classes during the day and online classes at night with volunteer teachers from all over the world, from the United States to the Netherlands and Hong Kong, most of whom are high school students in a global support network.

Even two years after enrolling, Laila faces surprise visits from her younger brother, who tells her she has brought shame on the family because she is “so free.” Her father is more open-minded, but he fears the gossip if a relative or neighbor finds out, Laila said.

Laila now speaks four languages fluently, including English, and is learning Korean. If she manages to leave the country after graduation, she said she would study graphic design in Canada or South Korea.

“I want to share these opportunities with other girls from my province, but I can’t,” Laila said.

The Taliban Turn a Blind Eye

During their first rule, between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban banned both primary and secondary education for girls, arguing that secular schools were contrary to their hardline interpretation of Islam.

They claimed this was a temporary measure, until they could establish a more compatible educational system, but that never happened.

After returning to power in 2021, they made similar claims regarding the public school system that had been developed during the 20-year U.S. occupation, and they continue to maintain that the ban is temporary.

However, five years into their second term in office, the temporary ban once again appears to be permanent.

The ban comes directly from Kandahar, the organization’s power base in the south and the residence of its reclusive leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada. Many Taliban officials say privately that it should be lifted, but no one questions their leader’s order.

In practice, many Taliban turn a blind eye to schools operating in secret.

They are well aware of Laila’s school: Taliban police and intelligence officers visit it every week to ensure that the female students wear their hijabs properly and do not mix with boys, who are legally enrolled at the same school.

However, they can order the school to close at any time.

When they see the Taliban approaching, the guards at Laila’s school alert the teachers and the principal via walkie-talkies and then ring a distinctive bell to warn the students.

Najib, the school principal, said that when he asked some unidentified Taliban officers to show him their identification during a recent visit, one of them shouted, “My ID is my weapon.”

“And my weapon is my pen,” Najib said he replied.

He quoted verses from the Quran regarding the mandate that all children be educated, and this seemed to satisfy them.

The Taliban left.

Failing to Succeed

Many young girls in Afghanistan try to delay graduating as long as possible.

In December, 12-year-old Somaya took her sixth-grade final exams, but she did not take the exams in the Dari language, social studies, or Quranic studies, hoping she would fail and have to repeat her final year.

“I really like going to school,” she said. “I just wanted to stay.”

A few weeks later, her teacher told Somaya she could return. There was only a spot for her in the 4th grade, so sometimes she helps with teaching, since she already knows the curriculum.

Fatima, 12, a student at another school, tore up her exam paper during her sixth-grade final exams last year, hoping that her teachers would fail her and let her repeat the grade. But they passed her anyway, she said.

As Fatima spoke in a low voice in her family’s living room in Kabul, her father, Azizullah, teared up and left the room.

“I cry when I think about how often she says she wants to become a doctor, and how now it’s all over,” Azizullah said.

But Fatima found her courage again. A few weeks later, she passed the entrance exams for a clandestine school.

Tasnim, an elementary school teacher, said she avoids farewell parties for her sixth-grade students because she can’t bear to see them cry.

She no longer has an answer when they ask her, “Why did all this happen?”

When her own daughter, Kousar, finished sixth grade, Tasnim convinced a colleague to accept her into her class so she could repeat the year.

Her daughter’s graduation certificate reads: “Successfully promoted to 7th grade.”

“We’re trying to make them happy,” Tasnim said.

“But there is no 7th grade.”

Source: in.gr