This report has been published in partnership with the Guardian.
When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Nahid, 24, was midway through her economics degree. She had hoped to graduate and perhaps work in a university.
Instead, Nahid now spends her mornings at a religious school in the basement of a mosque in the western city of Herat, sitting on the floor and reciting scripture with 50 women and girls, all dressed head to toe in black.
She knows the Taliban’s is “trying to change women’s mind”, but says she attends the class because, “it’s the only way I can leave my home and fight depression”. The incentive of 1000 afghani she receives every month also helps.
Nahid’s story is not unusual. A Guardian and Zan Times investigation across eight of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, has revealed the Taliban’s deliberate and calculated efforts to make religious studies the only education option available to women and girls in Afghanistan.
After first excluding women and girls from secondary school and further education, the regime has been building a vast new network of religious schools that encourage and incentivise a new alternative.
There were more than 21,000 Islamic education centres across Afghanistan by the end of 2024, according to reports in Irfan Magazine, a Taliban-run publication. To staff them, the ministry has issued teaching certificates to 21,300 madrasa graduates recognising them as qualified at high school, bachelor’s or even master’s level.
The religious schools expansion shows no sign of slowing. Between September 2024 and February 2025, the Taliban built or laid foundations for nearly 50 new madrasas across 11 provinces.
Families have been left with few alternatives since girls were excluded from secondary schools and so often find themselves pressured or incentivised into enrolling their children, especially daughters, in religious schools.
“They told us: ‘Send your daughters to the madrasa or you get nothing,” says Nasreen, a mother of four in the southwestern Nimroz province who relies on food aid.
Others describe being promised jobs, rations or cash-for-work placements. Karima, also in Nimroz, pulled her two daughters out of school at the request of the local mullah. “He said he would give us aid if I sent them to his class. But in the end, nothing came.”
In the girls’ schools that still remain open for the primary grades, the impact is visible. Class sizes have shrunk dramatically. In Nimruz, one teacher says that 57 of her pupils left for madrasas this year alone. “Before, each grade had four sections with 40 students. Now we have three sections with only 20 to 25.”
Even those who stay often attend both institutions, spending mornings in the madrasa and afternoons in school, until pressure mounts and they drop out altogether.
Meanwhile, experienced teachers with university degrees have been stopped from teaching. Their replacements are often teenage madrasa graduates with no classroom training, but strong ideological credentials.
In the western province of Farah, a principal recalls being ordered to dismiss five qualified teachers. One of their replacements was appointed headmistress despite being unable to read fluently; her only qualification, says the principal, was that she had connections with officials and held a certificate from a religious school.
The curriculum in madrasas is narrow: Qur’anic memorisation, Taliban interpretations of Islamic law, gender roles and modesty codes. Maths and science are absent. Textbooks are imported from Pakistan and printed in Pashto even in Dari-speaking regions [Dari and Pashto are the two main official languages in Afghanistan], leaving many children struggling to understand.
Lessons are typically held between 8.30am and 11am, the same hours as formal school forcing families to choose. Activists say even international aid is siphoned off to support madrasas. In one case, stationery donated by UNICEF to a public school was diverted to a mullah’s class; the school janitor was told to record the loss as “misplaced,” says a school teacher.
The influence of mullahs reaches far beyond the classroom. As community leaders and conduits for aid, they wield power over daily life. “Send your daughters to our religious classes, or we will remove your names from the list of food and cash aid,” one mother in the northern city of Kunduz recalls being told. Another resident, says even job opportunities are reserved for families whose daughters attend religious classes.
The result is a steady reshaping of community norms. Families who resist face isolation and hunger. Those who comply often watch their daughters return home more rigid, more critical, sometimes denouncing their parents as “infidels.”
The expansion of madrasas is also reshaping Afghanistan’s job market. Civil servants with years of training are being replaced by teenagers with madrasa certificates. In Nimroz, one activist recalls a woman with a bachelor’s degree and 20 years of experience at the women’s affairs department dismissed without explanation. Her replacement: a 17-year-old madrasa graduate. “Now everyone understands. If you want a job, forget university. Go to the madrasa.”
The message has filtered down. Girls we interviewed say they no longer dream of becoming doctors or engineers. Instead, they see madrasa certificates as safer and increasingly the only qualification that counts.
For Nahid, the economics student turned madrasa pupil, the paradox is cruel. The classes offer her a reprieve from isolation and depression, but only within the confines of an ideology she rejects. “If I stay home, I will lose my mind. If I go, at least I see other women.”
