In Afghanistan, thousands of classrooms are empty due to the Taliban's ban on girls' education
KABUL: Before the Taliban suspended girls' secondary education, some of Salma's friends attended her school in Kabul with their older sisters. But after the ban was imposed almost three years ago, they stopped attending classes altogether.
“They didn't want to come alone. It's sad to lose your friends,” Salma, who is now in the fifth grade, told Arab News.
She also remembered how she and her friends used to attend the older girls' classes on the second floor – something she no longer does since the floor has been empty since the ban. It reminded the 12-year-old girl of the future ahead of her.
“What worries us even more is the thought that after two years we won't be able to come to our school. We will graduate after the sixth grade and then there will be no future for us,” she said.
From September 2021 – a month after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan – girls are banned from attending secondary school, which has resulted in around 1.1 million girls being denied access to formal education and thousands of classrooms and buildings left empty.
“Girls' schools are only active up to the sixth grade. The rest of the classes – seventh to twelfth grade – are … not being used,” an official from the Afghan Ministry of Education told Arab News. “The remaining buildings are out of order.
Afghanistan officially recognized about 20,000 schools as of August 2022, of which only about half had functional buildings and about 5,000 were damaged after the war, data from the education ministry showed. Meanwhile, according to official estimates, there were about 4,000 middle and high schools for girls in the country before the education ban was imposed.
Since classrooms and buildings that once housed older girls are now empty, they could instead be used to house more girls in lower grades, said Najla Ahmadzai, a public school teacher in Kabul.
“Before, we didn't have enough space to accept more female students. We had a very low entrance fee. Now that we have more space, we can accept more girls, especially in the first to third year,” she told Arab News, adding that the unused spaces can bring about “positive change”.
But even then, the empty classrooms that used to be used by girls in higher grades “pain my heart,” she said.
“It's painful and unbelievable for me as a teacher and as a mother. I think of my own daughters, but also of the daughters of the earth. They have the right to an education and deserve to be part of society.”
The abandoned buildings are a painful reminder of what has been taken away from girls like Bibi Laila, who at 16 is among those who are not allowed to go to school.
“Instead of being used to educate girls, especially the older ones, the buildings are just empty and turning into scary spaces because no one has been there for the last three years,” said Laila.
“We have schools, we have buildings, we have teachers, books and everything. We can go to school from tomorrow. But (the Taliban's) policy is preventing me and thousands of other girls from getting an education and achieving our dreams and hopes.”
Neither domestic appeals nor international pressure on the Taliban administration helped lift the ban, which the authorities repeatedly said was an “internal matter”. The ban was later extended to universities as well, with more than 100,000 female students blocked from completing their studies.
“If we don't go back to school, we will become illiterate,” Laila said. “We are very sad, but there is nothing we can do. I think people in the country and in the world forget about us.”
