Two districts in northwest Afghanistan offer a glimpse into life under the Taliban, who completely stopped education for teenage girls.
By Adam Nossiter
Photographs of Kiana Hayeri
May 17, 2021
SHEBERGHAN, Afghanistan – At a meeting with village elders in the mosque, the order to close the girls’ schools was announced. The messages were filtered through the teachers in muted meetings at the students’ homes. Or came in a brief letter to the local school principal.
Appeals to the Taliban, arguments and requests were useless. Three years ago, girls over the age of 12 stopped taking classes in the two rural districts south of this low provincial capital in northwestern Afghanistan. Up to 6,000 girls were forced out of school overnight. Male teachers were suddenly dismissed: what they had done to give girls an education was against Islam, the Taliban said.
Across Afghanistan, the orders were similar to those given just 40 miles south of the capital of Jowzjan Province. In districts controlled by the Taliban, with few exceptions, there is no longer any schooling for all but the youngest girls. The Taliban’s message: teenage girls should be at home and help their mothers.
“I couldn’t go to school for two years,” said 16-year-old Farida, who was kicked out of school in the Darzab district at the age of 12 and was a refugee here in the provincial capital at the age of 14 My sister, who told me that there would be no more school – she is a teacher, ”said Farida. “So I was at home helping my mother with the housework.”
The schools in Sheberghan all have their share of teenage female refugees traveling north from Taliban-controlled areas to stay with relatives.
“I told my family,” I really, really want to go to college, “said 16-year-old Nabila, who came to Sheberghan with her mother from Darzab two years ago.” Maybe they’re just afraid of women. “
The reluctant consent of local people offers a glimpse into the lives of Afghans everywhere if the current slow collapse of state forces continues. Every day brings bad news about the rising uprising: more bases are overrun, districts conquered, outposts handed over and government employees and journalists murdered. Since May 1, when the United States officially began withdrawing, the Taliban have taken territory in virtually all parts of the country.
And over the weekend, a triple bomb attack on a school in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed dozens of schoolgirls. While the Taliban denied responsibility, the perpetrator sent a clear signal: Education for girls will not be tolerated.
But the future has already arrived in the south of Jowzjan Province. The parallel universe that is the lot of many Afghans today is a living reality for the province’s education officials and teachers. With grim resignation they have to grapple with the fate of their neighbors who live nearby and yet on the other side of the mirror.
The Taliban control the districts of Qosh Tepa and Darzab – drought-stricken and impoverished agricultural areas that are home to around 70,000 people – and all 21 schools in these districts. They took command in 2018 after fierce fighting with local Taliban apostates who had declared allegiance to the Islamic State, as well as with government troops.
Despite the Taliban’s control, the district teachers trudge to Sheberghan, the provincial capital, every month to collect their salaries. This is one of many anomalies in a country that is already de facto controlled by two governments. It is better to have to pay teachers than to close schools. The dusty but busy city is still in the hands of the central government, but like other provincial capitals, it is an isolated island. The Taliban rule the streets, come and go.
The provincial government still employs headmasters for the conquered districts. But local education officials watch helplessly as Islamist insurgents add a large dose of religion to the curriculum, slash history classes and keep the girls away.
The teachers were fired. The Taliban use free government textbooks but strictly monitor their use and ensure that those who study Islam receive intensive training. And they punish teachers who don’t show up for work and tie up their wages. There are no days off. The Taliban have accused teachers in these districts of spying and shaving their beards.
“If we don’t obey them, we will be punished,” Jowzjan Education Director Abdul Rahim Salar remembered the teachers and school principals who told him. “They were worried about their lives.”
For the girls fleeing to Sheberghan to continue their education, there is a sense of a confusing fate that is imposed and narrowly avoided by the Taliban. Nilofar Amini, 17, said she missed the school she was expelled from three years ago. She had only arrived here in the provincial capital four days earlier.
“I want to be brought up,” said Ms. Amini, sitting with relatives in a room in an abandoned shopping mall.
Her high-pitched voice was muffled by the light blue burqa that the Taliban themselves imposed on teenagers – she wore it out of habit but removed it after the interview. Ms. Amini described her life since she was banned from school: “I sewed, made kilim rugs, handicrafts.”
She added, “The girls stay inside all day. You can’t even visit relatives. “The Taliban destroyed the cell phone towers; No chatting on phones.
Ms. Amini’s father, Nizamuddin, a farmer who sat next to her in the mall, pointed out the consequences of the Taliban’s restrictions on the education of girls: “I am illiterate. It’s like I’m blind I have to be led by others. That’s why I want my daughters to be raised. “
The Taliban’s educational policy for girls can vary slightly. Local commanders make the decisions, reflecting the decentralization of a movement that scientists like Antonio Giustozzi have called the “network of networks”. Human Rights Watch found in a report last year that while Taliban commanders often allow girls to go to school until the age of 12, it is unusual for them to allow older girls to do so. In some areas, “community pressure has pushed commanders to give girls better access to education,” the report said.
But not many. And not in this part of Afghanistan.
A teacher in the district, whose three teenage daughters are now excluded from school, said, “The situation is bad and I feel bad for her. You have nothing to do. “He added that his daughters only help their mother with household chores.
The teacher, who had met at the headquarters of the provincial school in Sheberghan, where he had collected his salary, asked not to use his name for fear of retaliation from the Taliban. He said his daughters keep asking when they can return to school.
“They didn’t let us study any longer,” said Fatima Qaisari, 15, in a dusty camp for refugees from neighboring Faryab province. She was 12 when her school closed.
Education officials describe an environment of oppression in which residents, parents and teachers have no opportunity to weigh up the strict and strict policies of the Taliban.
“We have been in contact with them many times. But there was no result, ”said Abdel Majid, the headmaster in Darzab.
“They tell us,“ Our government doesn’t want us to teach girls, ”he said.“ Nobody can disobey them. ”The Islamic state faction demolished some of its schools; others have no windows.
First, Mr. Majid told many girls to “play a game” with the Taliban and pretend they were younger than the minimum age. “After a year they warned me to stop,” he said.
He and others were told that girls’ schools would remain closed, at least until the emergence of what Taliban officials portray to confused residents as the insurgent grail: a top-down “Islamic system” where there may be such a place for the education of girls.
Shaiasta Haidari, the finance director of Jowzjan Province schools, said officials had sent a letter alerting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to the situation. “Nothing happened,” she said. “Of course I’m not happy.”
Not far away at the Marshal Dostum School – named after General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former vice president and local warlord whose portrait hangs across the city – a handful of girls from Taliban-controlled districts are trying to make up for lost ground. One recent morning, streams of her schoolmates, laughing girls in black and white uniforms, streamed past the blooming grounds to start the school day.
In the director’s office, some of the refugees from Darzab and Qosh Tepa were amazed at the futility of the Taliban’s decision to expel them from school. Some said they wanted to be teachers; One girl was hoping to study engineering.
16-year-old Farida shook her head. “Your decision makes no sense. It’s not even logical. “
Nabila, the teenager from Darzab, added: “The Taliban do not have the sense to know that it is important for girls to go to school.”
Fatima Faizi and Kiana Hayeri contributed to the coverage.
