Afghanistan: The Struggle To Educate Girls - Brief Article

WIN News, Spring, 2000

NEW YORK TIMES, March 9, 2000

"Three months ago, Fatima and a few other women decided to break the law. They opened a school for girls. 'The Taliban know,' she said. 'We have 250 students. How could they not know? Taliban spies come around, asking this and that. Some approve, some don't. We'll wait and see.'

The school itself is a drafty, decrepit house with four rooms. It is reachable through one of Kabul's narrow alleyways. In the windows, sheets of torn, dirty plastic substitute for glass. Hanging blankets are used for doors[ldots]From time to time, Fatima glanced over her shoulder at an opening into the alleyway. People could see inside, and the Taliban are stern dispensers of wrath.

'We teach the usual subjects: science, math, geography and religion,' she said[ldots]The school has no chairs or desks. Students sit on old rugs. Two of the rooms have chalkboards. The other two have only wooden slabs torn from cupboards. A fifth class, held outside on the ground, has nothing. When the women opened the school, they simply allowed word-of-mouth to pass through the neighborhood. 'The response was amazing,' Fatima said. 'We've ended up with more children than we can manage. We hold sessions now in two shifts.' Most of the girls are eager, as if deprivaation had left an indelible hunger for education. The Taliban's earliest dictates banned women from the workplace and girls from schools[ldots]

Schooling for girls remains officially prohibited, but exceptions are being made. A few mullahs have been able to use their mosques as classrooms for girls, though the instruction is primarily religious. Schools of varying sizes have opened in homes, some secretly, others discreetly. The United Nations estimates that 10,000 young girls are going to classes in Kabul - and more all the time.

'Most girls have lost four years of education,' said Fatima, going from one classroom into another. 'Children with illiterate parents have suffered the most[ldots]Afghanistan has always had a male-dominated culture, but many women in the cities had escaped the restraints. Jobs and schools were their oases of independence. That is no longer so."