Letters of despair: Girls deprived of education tell their stories
During the past three years, the Taliban have relentlessly pursued a policy of social exclusion aimed at women. The Taliban don’t wave from their anti-woman and anti-education stance. Recently, they created a new law that bans women’s voices from being heard in public. During the 20 years of their insurgency, they burned down schools and flogged and stoned women wherever they gained control. During the Doha talks, politicians raised the aspiration of the Taliban’s softer stance towards women, but, when in power, the group never hesitated in implementing their inhumane policies against women. What is different from the 1990s is that it was no longer possible to immediately exclude women from society. It would take time for the Taliban to achieve its goals as they gradually suppressed women, minorities, and opponents.
Less than a month after taking control of Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban announced a cabinet composed entirely of male Taliban members. That decision surprised some who had expected the Taliban to include a symbolic female presence in their cabinet! However, not only did they refuse to include women in the cabinet, but they also purged women from lower administration levels of the government.
In those early days, women watched the Taliban’s actions with fear and anxiety. At that time, schools and universities had not yet been closed to them, and women still worked in the media, government offices, and private companies. But women sensed danger ahead.
Some believed that the Taliban would allow at least a minimal set of women’s rights in order to receive financial and diplomatic support from the international community. Soon, women took to the streets to warn that the Taliban’s policy towards women had not changed. After attacking and suppressing women’s marches, the Taliban’s Ministry of the Interior announced that demonstrations without their permission were banned on September 8, 2021. That same day, Ahmadullah Wasiq, the Taliban’s deputy minister of information and culture, called women’s sports “inappropriate.”
While the Taliban’s repression was focused primarily on women, they also imposed restrictions on the political and civil liberties of minority and other social groups. In the first month of their rule, they closed music centres and institutions. The media was filled with images of musical instruments being destroyed and artists being humiliated.
On September 12, the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education announced that universities would have to enforce segregation between female and male students, resulting in shocking images of classrooms divided by curtains separating male and female students. Those young people tolerated that restriction, hoping to keep the rest of the minimal opportunities for women’s education and employment.
On September 17, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was replaced with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. This symbolic change sent a clear political message: the Taliban intended to undo the 20-year effort to promote women’s rights. One day after that dissolution, girls in secondary and high schools were banned from attending classes, shattering the dreams of millions of girls and parents.
Those who could, left the country or were in the process of leaving, while those without the means or opportunity to leave endured immense hardship, clinging to the hope of a possible opening and fearing even darker days ahead. Thousands of young girls were confronted with a grim reality on September 18, 2021, and since then, have seen no hope of the schools reopening to females. Instead, restrictions on their personal and social lives have tightened with each passing day.
In the past two years, Zan Times has documented their experiences in dozens of reports and narratives as girls and women shared their personal stories about life under the Taliban regime and the impact of the closure of schools, universities, and other educational institutions. Some conveying their fears and hopes through letters.
Now, on the third anniversary of the closure of schools for girls above grade six, Zan Times begins publishing a selection of letters from girls deprived of education from different parts of Afghanistan. This testament is a way to document the historical oppression of the Taliban and to emphasize the importance of the struggle for women’s freedom, particularly their right to education and work.
Engaged, but still hoping to get back to school
Name: Pari Gul
Age: 17
Province: Jowzjan
I was in 10th grade when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. In the beginning, they allowed us to go to school while wearing the Taliban-mandated hijab. Girls were banned from attending school after I reached 11th grade. I was very passionate about studying medicine and worked hard to achieve my dream. I had already begun preparing for the university entrance exam. At that time, I thought the biggest obstacle to reaching my dreams was economic hardship. It wasn’t.
I had endured eleven years of school with many financial difficulties, but now, compared to what the Taliban have imposed on us, those problems seem so small. At the beginning of the Taliban’s rule, I was hopeful that I would also endure the hardships of their restrictions and continue my education. I optimistically continued my university entrance exam preparation. But when the time for the exam arrived, girls were not allowed to participate. Later, they also closed down the tuition centres we attended.
During my years at school, my father worked as a janitor and earned 8,000 afghani a month. Back then, our lack of financial resources was the main worry for my sisters and me. With the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education and work, I no longer worry about money the same way I used to. I still think that if schools and universities were open to us, we would study, even if we were hungry.
From the moment the Taliban came to power, I had this nagging worry in the back of my mind that they might close our schools. But I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t imagine that the Taliban had not changed at all in those 20 years. Toward the end of the republic, there had been so much talk about the changed Taliban and every time I worried about schools closing, I reassured myself by thinking that this time the Taliban must have changed and wouldn’t stop us from going to school.
Eventually, what I feared the most happened — they closed the schools. As time passed, they imposed more and more restrictions on us girls and women. Now, they have practically imprisoned us within the four walls of our homes. My life has completely changed over these three years.
A year after the schools were closed, a marriage proposal came for me. One of my father’s relatives, who lives in Iran, proposed that I marry his son. At first, I refused. As all the members of my family, especially my parents, welcomed the proposal, I accepted, too, in the end. That was a year ago. But more than the wedding, I am eagerly waiting for the schools to reopen. I still hold out hope for an official decree from the Taliban leader, telling myself, “If only the schools would open, so I could finish my last year of high school, and then get married.”
Three school years have passed without girls in schools above the sixth grade. Perhaps I will get married in another four months. Perhaps by the time you read this letter, I will have closed the chapter on my dearest dream — completing school and continuing my education at university — and gotten married.
Sometimes, I cry at night. I can’t sleep from the sadness. I am spending what should be the sweetest time of my life — my engagement — in a state of worry and grief. Now I tell myself that even if schools reopen, it may be too late for me to continue studying. But if my sisters and the girls of my country can go back to school, I will be happy.
Zan Times will continue to publish more letters from girls deprived of education.
