“I want” – the girl interrupts herself – “I wanted to be a doctor in the future. But when the Taliban arrived in Afghanistan, the doors of all schools were closed.”
Inside the Taliban-approved Naji-e-Bashra madrasa – an all-girls religious school on the outskirts of Kabul – a teenage girl with her face completely covered speaks shyly. The colleague grabs his arm under the table, aware that any criticism of the Taliban government is reckless.
Although these religious institutions are imperfect, they are the only option for most Afghan girls over the age of 12 who aspire to some form of education. Afghanistan continues to be the one in the world that prohibits girls and women from receiving general education at secondary and tertiary levels.
The ban is part of a wider crackdown on women’s rights by the Taliban since they took power in August 2021. The government dictates how women should dress, where they can and cannot go, and with whom – for example, requiring them to have a male guardian when traveling.
In July this year, the International Criminal Court stopped two top Taliban leaders, citing the persecution of women and girls as evidence of crimes against humanity. The Taliban denounced the court as demonstrating “enmity and hatred for the pure religion of Islam.”
The Taliban had initially said the suspension of female education would be temporary, and some leaders said they wanted to reopen schools as soon as security concerns were resolved. However, four years later, the fundamentalist wing of the movement appears to have won. Non-religious schools, universities and even health training centers remain closed to half the population. According to a report published in March by UNESCO, almost 1.5 million girls have been prevented from attending secondary school since 2021.
“We told the girls to wear appropriate hijabs, but they didn’t. They dressed as if they were going to a wedding ceremony,” Acting Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim said in December 2022 on state television, explaining why schools were closed. “The girls were studying agriculture and engineering, but that does not correspond to Afghan culture. Girls should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honor.”
The number of madrassas educating girls and boys across Afghanistan has grown sharply. According to data from the Ministry of Education, 22,972 state-funded madrasas were established in the last three years.
At the Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, where CNN recently gained rare access to film, the number of applications has soared since the Taliban began depriving girls of a “conventional” education.
As the sound of dozens of girls reciting verses from the Quran echoes through the corridors, golden copies of the holy book and other religious texts are piled on classroom floors. In the director’s office, a large Taliban flag leans in a corner. A certificate stamped by the Taliban Ministry of Education is located in the center of the desk. The subject curriculum is dictated by the Taliban, as in all madrassas in the country.
As it is a private institution, financed by the parents of the students who, in general, live in more privileged conditions, teachers have some scope to also teach languages and sciences, alongside Islamic studies. In public madrasas, funded by the Taliban government, the curriculum is almost entirely religious.
In 2022, the Taliban announced their plans for the school curriculum, introducing several changes that, according to the Afghanistan Human Rights Center, “not only do not meet the human development objectives of international human rights instruments, but also teach content that promotes violence, opposes the culture of tolerance, peace, reconciliation and human rights values.”
The report, published in December, alleges that the Taliban “adapted educational objectives to align with their extremist and violent ideology.” It also states that they altered history, geography and religion textbooks and banned the teaching of concepts such as democracy, women’s rights and human rights.
At the private Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, students have a little more freedom to study science and languages than at a state madrasa. Mick Krever/CNN
“The students are very happy with our environment, our curriculum and us”, says the director of Naji-e-Bashra, Shafiullah Dilawar, an avowed long-time supporter of the Taliban. “The madrasa curriculum is designed in such a way that it is very beneficial to the role of mothers in society so that they can raise good children.”
The director denies that these institutions serve to propagate the movement’s ideology.
He also insisted that, as the Afghan population is already deeply religious, many families are satisfied with this model of education for girls – and asked the international community to support their efforts.
The Taliban rejected multiple interview requests.
Secret schools
However, many girls and women in Afghanistan feel that madrassas are no substitute for the education they were increasingly accessing in the two decades leading up to the chaotic US withdrawal in 2021.
“I’ve never been interested in attending a madrasa. They don’t teach us what we need to learn,” argues Nargis, a 23-year-old woman in Kabul, who spoke via a secure phone line. CNN chose to use a pseudonym to protect its security.
Nargis is the model student: conscientious, organized, hardworking and dedicated to studies throughout her life.
At the time of the withdrawal of US troops from his city, he was studying Economics at a private university. I went to classes in the morning, worked part-time in the afternoon and, at night, learned English on my own. He never got tired of learning.
“If you asked me four years ago what I wanted to do with my life, I had many goals, dreams and hopes,” he recalls. “At that time I wanted to be a big businesswoman. I wanted to have a big school for girls. I wanted to go to Oxford. Maybe I would have my own coffee shop.”
Everything changed in August 2021. She was no longer able to attend classes, work and, she says, she was also no longer able to dream about the future she had previously planned – all because she was a woman.
What “broke his heart” the most, he confesses, was seeing the faces of his younger sisters, then aged 11 and 12, who came home one day and told him that the school had been closed.
“They didn’t eat anything for a month. They were desperate,” says Nargis. “I realized they would go crazy like that. So I made the decision to help them study. Even if I lose everything, I will do this.”
Nargis began to gather the manuals she had saved and began to teach her sisters everything she knew. Other family members and neighbors also started asking for help – and she had a hard time saying no.
So, every morning, at 6am sharp, before the Taliban guards wake up, around 45 schoolgirls, some as young as 12, sneak across the city to Nargis’ house. Without support or funding, girls often share a single manual, notebooks and pens.
Together, they learn mathematics, science, computers and English. Nargis searches her memory to transmit all the knowledge she has accumulated.
When the time comes for them to return home, he can’t help but worry.
“It’s very dangerous. There isn’t a day a week when I can relax. Every day, when they come to me, I worry a lot. It drives me crazy. It’s a big risk”, she says, afraid that the Taliban will discover her makeshift classroom and close it down – as has happened before.
Two months ago, members of the Taliban invaded the house where he taught. She spent a night in prison and was reprimanded for her work. His father and other male family members begged him to stop, saying it wasn’t worth it. But despite her fear, Nargis refuses to abandon her students. He changed location and continued.
A Taliban security officer guards a checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mick Krever/CNN
Until recently, USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) funded secret schools across the country – known as “community education” – as well as study abroad programs and online scholarships. With the cancellation of aid contracts worth $1.7 billion (of which $500 million had not yet been disbursed) by the Trump administration, several of these programs are now being closed.
Nargis herself was a beneficiary of one of these programs, studying online for a US-funded degree in Business Administration. Last month, he said, that program was canceled. It was the final blow to his ambitions. Not just the end of his studies, but “the end of my hopes and dreams.”
Nargis tries to keep herself busy. But, more times than she would like, despair takes over her and she asks herself if it is worth studying so much and risking so much to educate her sisters and friends. In Taliban Afghanistan, women cannot mix with men who are not familiar to them – nor work as doctors, lawyers or in most public spaces.
“My mother never studied. She always told us what it was like under the previous Taliban government, and that’s why we studied hard… But what’s the difference between me and my mother now?”, he asked. “I have an education, but we are both at home.
“Why so much effort? For what job and what future?”
