Down a dusty side street in Kabul we came to a gate. Two security guards quickly invited us in. Behind it was a ramshackle three-storey building, with a small outdoor area covered in green astro-turf. We went inside and sat a while in a reception room, where everyone seemed nervous. A few phone calls were made. And then four girls were brought in—Farishta, Diwa, Asia and Nadia.
They said they would be happy to tell me about being a schoolgirl in Afghanistan.
How events unfolded
Lots of their friends could not afford them. But they also got to do many other subjects, including maths, science and English, and all had ambitions to keep studying and learning more. When I got a tour later I could see that their school was a hastily converted house, with peeling wallpaper and moth-eaten carpets. It was hard to find maths and English teachers. Nadia had wanted to be a doctor. They saw the only option as becoming a teacher in an Islamic school, which they didn’t see as much of a future.
They had lost several years of education after the Taliban closed government secondary schools to girls in 2021. The madrasa (Islamic school) I was visiting opened two years ago and they and their families hustled to pay the fees, which were around 1,000 afghanis ($15) a month. There is no reliable figure, but experts I asked guessed that perhaps as little as 10% of secondary-age girls in Afghanistan are getting a formal education. The principal (who asked not to be identified) said he was educating some 600 girls there in the small, cramped classrooms.
Because they genuinely liked learning about their religion (they also said that they had no problem with codes requiring women to dress conservatively, which they anyway considered part of their culture), all four girls at the madrasa I visited said that they enjoyed doing Islamic subjects. Because many pupils could not afford the full fees and the school’s one foreign sponsor had cancelled its donation, money was short,. Because kabul is not a war zone, they could walk to school safely, and at least now,. Because they were barred from most jobs and university courses, the problem was that even though they had fought to get this precarious education, they wouldn’t be able to use it.
They were all delighted to be back in school, but they were the lucky ones, Farishta said. Diwa said she was paying the fees by teaching other girls English online in her spare time. Still, the girls said that the education they were getting there was good, better in fact than at the government-run schools they went to before. Asia said she had dreams of being a lawyer but she knew that would not happen.
What Happens Next
As with many aspects of life in Afghanistan, madrasas operate in a grey area. Officially, secondary schooling for girls has been suspended by the country’s hardline emir. But that policy is hugely unpopular with Afghans—and even, in fact, among the ruling Talibs. The workaround is that girls can attend privately run madrasas as long as, in theory, they only get a religious education. Of course, parents, teachers and some Talib governors want them to learn other things. But it has to happen quietly, or else there will be a crackdown.
