Meet The Afghan Girls Risking Bomb Attacks & Violence To Defy The Taliban’s Education Ban
It was early morning in September 2022 as 17-year-old Marwa made her way to her classroom at the private Kaaj Educational Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. She sat down at her desk, ready to take an exam, when a powerful explosion ripped through the building and threw her to the ground.
“I found myself under my desk. Then I just tried to get out,” she recalls.
Outside, she saw chaos: injured students, ambulances and the Taliban security forces.
A suicide bomber had attacked the institute, killing 53 and injuring 110 students, most of them young girls or women like Marwa, hungry for education under the strict Taliban rule. The attack was most likely carried out by the Khorasan Province branch of the Islamic State group ISKP, which has been responsible for similar bombings in the country.
Later that day, Marwa found out that one of her dearest friends, Zahra, did not survive the attack. She was devastated. “I fainted and did not wake up for several hours. I could not believe it,” she says.
At the time of the attack, Marwa had already been shut out from formal education for a year. After the Taliban took over the country in August 2021, girls above 6th grade (aged around 11) – who, along with boys, hadn’t been attending in-person classes anyway due to Covid – were never allowed back to school. Instead, they were banned from education, despite the group’s public promises to the contrary.
Private tuition centers were still allowed to continue offering university preparation courses, so Marwa had enrolled in one. But after the explosion, continuing her classes seemed risky.
“I was so unhappy. And my family also told me not to go back,” she says.
But Marwa couldn’t forget what Zahra had told her. “Zahra always said that it is only you who can change your situation,” she says. So she decided she would go back, more determined than ever.
Little did she know that, just a few months later, the Taliban would make it even more difficult for her to learn. In May 2023, the regime forced the private academies to shut their doors to girls and women. Universities had already closed for women in December 2022 – the noose was tightening.
“I kept studying at home, but for what?” Marwa asks. Seeing a future for herself in Afghanistan became increasingly difficult.
Hadisa, now 17, found herself in a similar situation. Also a survivor of the same attack, the hardest part for her was the mental suffering.
“It was the feeling of being alone in a society of men and not being able to do what I wanted,” she says. Hadisa no longer felt safe to go outside without a male member of the family after the Taliban took over. The private education centres had been her only hope.
Her isolation caused her to withdraw to a dark place inside her head.
“You’re just 15 years old and you’re not ready to face depression yet,” she says.
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In December 2022, the Taliban government decided to automatically promote all female 11th graders so that they could receive their high school graduation certificate. They only had to come to school for a day to sit the exams.
Hadisa was in 9th grade when the Taliban came into power in 2021. Since she still had three grades left to study, this did not apply to her. She has been left hanging, with an overwhelming feeling that “I need to get out of this country to study.”
Marwa, however, did receive her certificate. “But what does it mean to have a certificate without going to school? It’s just a paper,” the now-19-year-old says.
Luckily, her former teachers in Kabul introduced her to a programme run by an American private school, which helped Afghan girls get a high school education – all online.
Over the course of several months, she and six other Afghan girls studied with American teachers who were simultaneously teaching an actual live class in the US. This meant that the classes were at night for Marwa. It was also winter, and Kabul was struggling with prolonged electricity cuts – sometimes as long as 20 hours.
Another obstacle was financial: Marwa’s father is a shopkeeper, and scraping together a living is challenging in the financial crisis that hit Afghanistan after the American withdrawal. Internet costs were an additional luxury they could not afford.
“At first, I didn’t have money to pay for the internet, so I just borrowed money from friends and relatives,” Marwa explains.
Eventually, the school started supporting the girls with a small stipend.
Her efforts paid off: in spring this year, Marwa graduated for the second time – with almost straight As.
“My friend Zahra is the reason I am where I am today,” she says. “Now, I’m eligible to apply for university.”
But for Hadisa, the situation is more complicated. She had to find work to contribute to the family’s meagre income. Now, she works as an English teacher at a private academy six days a week. Her own studies have, of course, suffered because of this.
“It’s getting harder every day. I’m paying for my siblings’ school fees and I’m not studying in any in-person classes,” Hadisa says.
She has, however, been benefiting from online classes organized by AESOP, an online learning platform for Afghan girls started by a New Jersey-based teacher Dr Seth Holm.
AESOP provides free English language classes and also runs an online mentoring programme, taught by volunteer teachers both inside and outside of Afghanistan.
The courses do not lead to an actual high school graduation certificate, but they can help prepare students to eventually secure a scholarship abroad.
Since further studies in Afghanistan are no longer an option for women, both Marwa and Hadisa hope to be able to go abroad to study medicine. This is no easy feat though, considering the hurdles Afghans face in obtaining visas.
Still, Marwa’s dream is to become a doctor and eventually return to work in Afghanistan. “If I get a chance to go abroad, I plan to help not only myself but also my people”, she says.
Maija Liuhto is a freelance journalist formerly based in Kabul and now Istanbul, covering the Middle East and South Asia. She has written for titles including NPR, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera English and many more
