In Afghanistan, girls ’private schools are still open, but not everyone can afford them. The parents of many girls also forbid schooling. The Taliban has promised to open all public schools in March.
KANDAHAR A young veiled woman disappears inside turquoise-colored gates in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Inside the walls is a private women’s education institute with nearly 200 girls and young women studying.
However, after the Taliban came to power in August, girls from the seventh grade onwards were forced to stay home on the public side.
Under the Taliban regime, girls were not allowed into schools at all in the 1990s. Now, however, the Taliban have behaved somewhat differently: private schools have not been closed, and in early February, public universities also opened. The administration has promised that schools for girls of all ages across the country will also open on the public side in March.
Student girl: “I want to be an engineer”
The closure of public schools drove many teenage girls in the city of Kandahar to the private side. One of them is 14 years old Madina. He started studying English at a school in Kandahar two months ago.
The girl is hopeful that she will still be able to get back to school.
– When I graduate from school, I want to be an engineer, he says.
Madina is luckier than many others. On the private side, tuition fees are high. Not everyone can afford them, especially now that the Afghan economy has collapsed due to international sanctions and the end of aid. More than half of the population is at risk of famine, according to international organizations.
Old-fashioned culture creates barriers to schooling
The biggest barrier to girls and women attending school is the old-fashioned culture, especially in the south. In the past, less than 10 percent of high school girls were in school in Kandahar Province.
Madina says her cousins would like to study English and graduate as a doctor and engineer.
– Their parents won’t give them permission. They say it’s not good for girls to go to school, Madina explains.
Teacher Marwa Fazli keep their students brave as they continue to study in a difficult situation.
– We are not afraid of the Taliban. We just want our rights, and everything will be fine, he says.
However, some students find the staring of Taliban fighters scary on the streets. Many of the fighters are from extremist countryside and are not used to seeing women outside. Most women spend their lives within the four walls. Even in the city of Kandahar, women can only go out under the shelter of a burqa or niqab.
In rural areas, schooling was difficult even before the Taliban
Just a 15-minute drive from downtown Kandahar in Panjwayi, the situation is very different. Here the war raged for the last 20 years, civilians were forced to flee and houses were destroyed. The war prevented children, including boys, from attending school in such areas. There were not even schools everywhere – some of them only existed on paper so that corrupt officials could collect money in their pockets.
There is a lower secondary municipal school in downtown Panjway. Little boys are snatched in through the gates, entangled in shawls.
In the courtyard, a principal in his fifties Ahmad Kamil Akbari start organizing them in queues. Today, students are facing exams. In this area, the majority of girls were not sent to school even before the Taliban.
According to Akbar, the problem is not the idea of educating girls per se.
– Everything is related to public life and society’s attitudes. Girls do not want to be allowed to go to school.
Although Akbari works as a teacher herself, her daughters have not attended school either.
– If society changes, I will let my daughters get an education, she says.
The Taliban’s attitudes may be changing
In some areas of Afghanistan, the Taliban has allowed teenage public schools to reopen under community pressure. This has not happened in Kandahar.
The head of the provincial education agency is now the same man as 20 years ago, the Taliban Mufti Qudratullah. He is sitting behind his old desk again with a black turban on his head and glasses on his nose.
“I can confirm that the ministry is preparing a plan that will allow us to create a safe environment where girls can study. That includes arranging transportation, he says.
The biggest problem for the Taliban with regard to schools, according to Qudratullah, was that not all of them were segregated by gender. According to Unicef, only 16 percent of all schools had girls ’schools.
– In some areas, female teachers taught boys and men taught girls.
The Taliban no longer want to see this in schools. However, there are very few female teachers in Afghanistan.
The Taliban acted hostile to teachers as a terrorist group in the early 2000s and sometimes set fire to school buildings. From 2009 onwards, the movement stopped this as it provoked opposition in the communities.
However, it is unclear what kind of education the Taliban hopes for schools in Afghanistan in the future. No major changes have been made to the curriculum yet.
However, there is hope for it that soon all schools will open again for girls in Afghanistan.