As her first day of school under Taliban rule approached, Sajida Hussaini was hopeful. Her father, a teacher for 17 years, and her mother had instilled in her and her siblings the value of education, and she was now a year away from graduating high school.
Although the Taliban had taken over the country last summer, ending many of the rights she and other Afghan girls had enjoyed their entire lives, the regime had announced it would reopen schools on March 23 and allow girls to attend.
But when Sajida and her classmates arrived at the school’s front door, administrators informed them that sixth-grade girls were no longer allowed into the classrooms. Many of the girls burst into tears. “I will never forget that moment in my life,” Sajida said. “It was a dark day.”
Sajida was among the million or so girls in Afghanistan preparing to return to their classrooms after an eight-month hiatus. With the Taliban out of power in the first decades of the 21st century, girls and women across the country had gained new freedoms that were suddenly called into question again when the fundamentalist group swept through Kabul in August. In its first statements to the international community, the Taliban signaled that it would relax some of its policies that restrict women’s rights, including a ban on education. But that has not been the case, and when the day came to reopen schools, Sajida and others realized that the Taliban intended to maintain their long-standing restrictions, erasing any optimism that the regime would show more ideological flexibility in search of international credibility. In addition to maintaining its ban on schooling girls, the Taliban has ordered women to cover themselves from head to toe when in public and banned them from working outside the home, traveling abroad without a male guardian and participating in protests.
For a generation of girls raised to aspire to the professional class, the Taliban’s restrictions have shattered, or at least postponed, the dreams they had harbored since their earliest memories.
Born into a middle-class Shiite family, Sajida had always assumed that she would finish her college education and one day earn enough money to take care of her parents when they grew old.
“My parents raised me with hope and fear,” he said. Hope to enjoy the rights denied to previous generations of girls who grew up under the previous Taliban government; They fear that one day the country will once again be under the power of people “who do not believe that girls make up half of human society.”
He began attending school at the age of 7 and soon fell in love with reading, devouring every novel he came across.
“I was planning to study Persian literature to be a good writer and reflect on the wounds and plight of my society,” Sajida said.
Even in the years after the Taliban were ousted from power, Sajida witnessed dozens of attacks by militant groups on schools and academic centers around Kabul.
In May 2021, ISIS bombed a Shiite girls’ school, killing at least 90 girls and wounding 200 others.
Despite the risk of facing violence, he continued to attend school and finished 11th grade last year before the Taliban took Kabul and left his hopes of finishing high school and going to university in the air.
The sudden change in fortunes has devastated parents across the country who invested years and savings to ensure their daughters’ opportunities for professional success.
In the southeastern province of Ghazni, 150 kilometers west of Kabul, Ibrahim Shah said he had worked for years to earn enough money to send his children to school. His daughter Belqis, 25, graduated from university a year ago, just a few months before the Taliban took control. She aspired to work as a public official in her country and be a role model for the generation of girls educated to dream big. Now he doesn’t know what he will do. The return of the Taliban “was a dark day for Afghan women and girls,” she said.
In response to the Taliban’s policies, the UN Security Council convened a special meeting and called “on the Taliban to respect the right to education and fulfill their commitments to reopen schools for all female students without further delay.” The European Union and the United States also issued condemnations.
“Taliban authorities have repeatedly publicly assured that all girls can go to school,” Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva, told BuzzFeed News. “We urge you to honor this commitment and immediately repeal the ban to allow girls of all ages across the country to safely return to their classrooms.”
In response to the ban, the World Bank announced in March that it would reconsider funding $600 million for four projects in Afghanistan aimed at “supporting urgent needs in the education, health and agriculture sectors, as well as community livelihoods.”
Amid international pressure, the Taliban announced that they were establishing an eight-member commission to deliberate their policy on girls’ schools. Sajida and four other girls who spoke to BuzzFeed News expressed skepticism that the regime would allow them to return to their classrooms.
