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As the first day of school under Taliban rule approaches, Sajida Hussaini is hopeful. His father, a teacher for 17 years, and his mother has instilled in him and his siblings the value of education, and now he is one year away from graduating high school.
Although the Taliban took control of the country last summer, marking the end of the rights she and other Afghan girls have enjoyed all their lives, the regime announced it would reopen schools on March 23 and allow girls to attend.
But when Sajida and her friends arrived in front of the school gate, the administrators told them that girls beyond the sixth grade were no longer allowed to enter the classroom. Many girls are crying. “I will never forget that moment in my life,” said Sajida. “It was a dark day.”
Sajida is among the one million or more girls in Afghanistan who are preparing to return to the classroom after an eight-month hiatus. With the Taliban out of power in the early decades of the 21st century, girls and women across the country enjoyed new freedoms that were suddenly stripped back when the fundamentalist group attacked Kabul in August. In an early statement to the international community, the Taliban signaled that it would loosen some policies that restrict women’s rights, including bans on education. But that hasn’t happened yet, and when the day comes to reopen schools, Sajida and others learn that the Taliban intend to maintain the long-standing ban, dashing any optimism that the regime will show ideological flexibility to gain international credibility. . In addition to maintaining a ban on girls’ schools, the Taliban have ordered women to cover themselves from head to toe in public and banned them from working outside the home, traveling abroad without a male guardian, and participating in protests.
For a generation of girls raised for the professional class, the Taliban’s restrictions have ruined, or at least put on hold, dreams they’ve held dear since their earliest memories.
Born into a middle-class Shia family, Sajida always thought she would complete her college education and one day earn enough money to take care of her parents in their old age.
“My parents raised me with hope and fear,” he said. Hopefully they will get the rights denied to previous generations of girls growing up under Taliban rule; fearing that the country would return to the power of men “who do not believe that girls constitute half of human society.”
He started school at age 7 and soon fell in love with reading, devouring every novel he could get his hands on.
“I plan to study Persian literature to become a good writer and describe the wounds and conditions of my society,” said Sajida.
Even in the years after the Taliban were ousted from power, Sajida witnessed dozens of attacks by militant groups on schools and academic centers around Kabul.
In May 2021, ISIS bombed a Shia girls’ school, killing at least 90 girls and injuring 200 others.
Despite the risk of facing violence, he continued his schooling, completing the 11th grade last year before the Taliban took over Kabul and leaving hopes of finishing high school and college up in the air.
The sudden shift in fortunes has devastated parents across the country who invested years and savings into securing their daughters’ opportunities for professional success.
In the southeastern province of Ghazni 150 kilometers west of Kabul, Ibrahim Shah said he had been doing manual labor for years to earn enough money to send his children to school. His daughter Belqis, who is 25, graduated from college a year ago, just months before the Taliban took over. She aspires to work as a civil servant for her country and to be a role model for the generation of girls who are raised to dream. Now they don’t know what to do. The return of the Taliban “is a dark day for Afghan women and girls,” she said.
In response to the Taliban’s policy, the UN Security Council held a special meeting and called on “the Taliban to respect the right to education and fulfill their commitment to reopen schools for all female students without delay.” The European Union and the US also issued condemnations.
Taliban “authorities have repeatedly made public guarantees that all girls can go to school,” Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman at the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva, told BuzzFeed News. “We call on them to honor this commitment and immediately lift the ban so that girls of all ages across the country can safely return to the classroom.”
In response to the ban, the World Bank announced in March that it would reconsider funding $600 million for four projects in Afghanistan with the goal of “supporting essential needs in the education, health, and agriculture sectors, as well as community livelihoods.”
Amid international pressure, the Taliban announced that it was setting up an eight-member commission to consider policies on girls’ schools. Sajida and four other girls who spoke to BuzzFeed News expressed skepticism that the regime would allow them to return to class.
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