Afghan teenager Amena saw dozens of classmates killed when her girls’ school was targeted by an ISIS bomb attack in May, but she was determined to continue her education.
Now, mostly secondary school girls in the country, she is banned from lessons altogether after the Taliban’s hardline regime excluded them from returning to class one month ago.
On September 18, Afghanistan’s new Islamist rulers ordered male teachers and boys aged 13 and over back to secondary schools, picking up an academic year already cut short by violence and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I wanted to study, see my friends and have a bright future, but now I am not allowed,” 16-year-old Amena told AFP at her home in western Kabul.
The Taliban later said older girls can return to secondary schools, which were already mostly split by gender, but only once security and stricter segregation under their interpretation of Islamic law could be ensure.
Primary schools, meanwhile, have reopened for all children and women can go to private universities, though with tough restrictions on their clothes and movement.
She said ,”Half of the society is made up of girls and the other half is made up of boys. There is no difference between them”.The number of schools tripled and female literacy nearly doubled to 30 per cent, but the change was largely limited to the cities.
“Afghan women have made great achievements in the past 20 years,” said Nasrin Hasani, a 21-year-old teacher at a Kabul secondary school who now helps out with primary pupils.
Hasani said she was clinging to hope that the Taliban will be “a little different” from their brutal 1996-2001 regime, when women were not even allowed out of their homes unchaperoned.
Amnesty International reported that one high school teacher received death threats and was summoned for prosecution because she used to teach co-educational sport.
The 12-year-old was stuck looking out of the window with a “terrible feeling” last month when boys went back to school.”It is quite obvious that things get worse day by day”, said Zainab, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.
Malalay, whose name has also been changed, passes her time helping around the house, cleaning, washing dishes and doing laundry.
