In Afghanistan, the Taliban's ban on girls' education leaves thousands of classrooms empty
KABUL: Before the Taliban suspended secondary education for girls, some of Salma's friends attended her school in Kabul with their older sisters. But after the ban almost three years ago, they stopped going to classes altogether.
“They didn't want to come alone. It's sad to lose friends,” Salma, now in the fifth grade, told Arab News.
She also recalled how she used to visit the older girls' classrooms on the second floor with her friends, which she no longer does because the level was empty after the ban. It reminded the 12-year-old of the future ahead of her.
“It is even more offensive to think that in two years we will not be able to come to our school. We will finish school after six grades and we will have no future after that,” she said.
Since September 2021 — a month after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan — girls have been banned from secondary school, leaving an estimated 1.1 million girls without access to formal education and thousands of classrooms and buildings empty.
“Board schools only run up to the sixth grade. The rest of the grades – grades seven through 12 – … are not being used,” a representative of Afghanistan's education ministry told Arab News. “The rest of the buildings are not functioning.”
Afghanistan officially recognized about 20,000 schools as of August 2022, of which only about half had functional buildings and about 5,000 were damaged after the war, education ministry data showed. Meanwhile, according to official estimates, there were about 4,000 middle and high schools for girls in the country before the ban was imposed.
Because the classrooms and buildings that once housed the older girls are now empty, they could instead be used to house more girls in the younger grades, said Najla Ahmadzai, a teacher at a public school in Kabul.
“Before, we didn't have enough space to accommodate more girls. We had a very low acceptance rate. Now that we have more space, we can accommodate more girls, especially in grades one to three,” she told Arab News, adding that the unused spaces could lead to “positive change.”
But even then, the empty classrooms that used to be used by high school girls “makes my heart ache,” she said.
“As a teacher and as a mother, it is painful and unbelievable for me. I think not only of my daughters, but also of the daughters of the country. They have a right to education and deserve to be part of society.”
The abandoned buildings are a painful reminder of what was taken from girls like Bibi Laila, who was banned from school at 16.
“Instead of using the buildings to educate the girls, especially the older ones, they just sit empty and turn into scary places because no one has been there for the last three years,” Laila said.
“We have schools, we have buildings, we have teachers, books and everything. We can go to school from tomorrow. But (the Taliban's) politics prevent me and thousands of other girls from getting an education and realizing their dreams and hopes.”
Neither domestic appeals nor international pressure on the Taliban administration has helped lift the ban, which the authorities have repeatedly said is an “internal matter”. The ban was later extended to universities, with more than 100,000 female students unable to graduate.
“If we don't go back to school, we will become illiterate,” Laila said. “We are very sad, but there is nothing we can do. I think that we are forgotten both in the country and in the world.”
