“I want to” – the girl pauses – “I wanted to become a doctor in the future. But when the Taliban came to Afghanistan, all the school doors were shut.”
At the Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, a religious school for girls on the outskirts of Kabul, a teenager fully veiled nervously speaks. Her classmate grabs her hand under the table, understanding that any criticism of the Taliban government is unwelcome.
Although these religious institutions are imperfect, they are the only option for most Afghan girls aged 12 and older who seek an education. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from receiving general education at the secondary and higher levels.
This ban is part of a broad crackdown on women’s rights by the Taliban since they came to power in August 2021. The government dictates how women must dress, where they can and cannot go, and with whom they must travel – for example, always accompanied by a male guardian during trips.
In July this year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two leading Taliban leaders, citing persecution of women and girls as evidence of crimes against humanity. The Taliban condemned the court, calling it “hostile and hateful to the pure religion of Islam.”
Initially, the Taliban claimed that suspending education for girls would be temporary, and some leaders expressed a desire to reopen regular schools after security issues were resolved. But after four years, the fundamentalist wing of the Taliban seems to be prevailing. Non-religious schools, universities, and even medical training centers remain closed to half the population. According to a UNESCO report published in March, nearly 1.5 million girls have been denied access to secondary education since 2021.
“We told the girls to wear proper hijabs, but they did not listen. They dressed as if they were going to a wedding,” explained acting Minister of Higher Education Nida Mohammad Nadim in December 2022 on state television, explaining the reasons for school closures. “Girls studied agriculture and engineering, but that does not align with Afghan culture. Girls should study, but not in fields that contradict Islam and Afghan honor.”
Meanwhile, the number of madrasas teaching girls and boys across Afghanistan has sharply increased. According to the Ministry of Education, 22,972 state madrasas have been established over the past three years.
At the Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, where rare filming access was granted, the number of students surged after the Taliban deprived girls of the opportunity to receive a “regular” education.
While the corridors echo with the voices of dozens of girls reciting the Quran, gold-embellished Qurans and religious texts are stacked on classroom floors. In the director’s office, a large Taliban flag stands in the corner. On the desk lies a certificate certified by the Taliban Ministry of Education. The Taliban determine the curriculum here – as in all madrasas across the country.
Since this is a private institution funded by the students’ parents, who usually have a more privileged status, the staff has a bit more freedom to also teach languages and sciences alongside Islamic studies. In government-funded madrasas, the curriculum is almost entirely religious.
In 2022, the Taliban announced plans for a curriculum that, according to a report by the Afghan Human Rights Center, “not only fails to meet the human development goals of international legal documents but also teaches content that promotes violence, opposes a culture of tolerance, peace, reconciliation, and human rights values.”
A report published last December states that the Taliban “adapted educational goals to their extremist and violent ideology.” They altered textbooks on history, geography, and religion, banning the teaching of concepts such as democracy, women’s rights, and human rights.
“Students are very satisfied with our environment, our program, and us,” says the director of the Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, Shafiullah Dilawar, who openly supports the Taliban. “The program established at the madrasa is designed to be very useful for the role of mothers in society, so they can raise good children.”
He denies any assumptions that such institutions are used to spread the Taliban’s ideological goals.
The director insists that since the Afghan population is already deeply religious, many families are satisfied with this form of education for girls and asks the international community to support his efforts.
The Taliban refused several interview requests.
However, many girls and women in Afghanistan consider madrasas no substitute for the education they could have received during two decades before the chaotic withdrawal of American troops in 2021.
“I never wanted to go to a madrasa. They don’t teach what we need to know,” said Nargis, a 23-year-old woman from Kabul, speaking via a secure phone line. CNN used a pseudonym for her safety.
Nargis is an exemplary student. She is diligent, organized, hardworking, and has studied hard all her life.
When American troops were leaving her city, Nargis was studying at the economics faculty of a private university. In the morning she attended classes, worked part-time during the day, and studied English independently in the evening. She never grew tired of learning.
“If you had asked me four years ago what I wanted from life, I had many goals, dreams, and hopes,” she says sadly. “Back then, I wanted to become a great businesswoman. I wanted to import goods from other countries. I wanted to have a big school for girls. I wanted to study at Oxford University. Maybe I would have had my own coffee shop.”
Everything changed in August 2021. She was banned from attending classes, lost her job, and, she says, stopped dreaming about the future she once planned – all because she is a woman.
But what broke her heart the most was seeing the faces of her younger sisters, who were then 11 and 12 years old, who one day came home and said their school had been closed.
“They didn’t eat for a month. They were desperate,” Nargis recalls. “I realized they would go crazy like that. So I decided to help them with their studies. Even if I lose everything, I will do it.”
Nargis began gathering all her old textbooks and teaching the girls everything she had learned. Other relatives and neighbors also started asking for help – and she found it hard to refuse.
Every morning at 6 a.m., before the Taliban guards wake up, about 45 students aged 12 and older secretly come to Nargis’s home. She has no support or funding – the girls often gather around a single textbook, sharing notebooks and pens.
Together they study math, science, computer science, and English. Nargis strains her memory to pass on everything she once knew to her students.
When it’s time to go home, she is constantly worried.
“It’s very dangerous. There isn’t a day when I can relax. Every day when they come to me, I worry a lot. It drives me crazy. It’s a big risk,” she says, fearing the Taliban will discover her makeshift class and shut it down, as they have done before.
Two months ago, the Taliban raided the house where she was teaching. She spent a night in jail and was warned about her activities. Her father and other men in the family begged her to stop, saying it’s not worth the risk. But, though frightened, Nargis refuses to abandon her students. She changed locations and continues teaching.
Until earlier this year, USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) funded secret schools across the country – so-called “community-level education” – as well as overseas training programs and online scholarships. After contracts worth $1.7 billion (of which $500 million had not yet been paid) were canceled under the Trump administration, many of these programs are gradually closing.
Nargis herself was a participant in one such program, studying online for a bachelor’s degree in business administration in a US-funded program. Last month, she says, this program was canceled. It was the last straw for her ambitions. Not only the cancellation of education but the “cancellation of my hopes and dreams.”
Nargis tries to keep busy. But more often than she would like, despair overwhelms her, and she wonders if it’s worth studying so hard and risking so much to educate her sisters and friends. Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women cannot interact with men who are not relatives, work as doctors, lawyers, or in most public places.
“My mother was never educated. She always told me how it was under the previous Taliban government, and that’s why we studied hard… But what’s the difference between me and my mother now?” she asks. “I have an education, but we both sit at home.”
“What are we working so hard for? For what job and what future?”