Last week, the Taliban banned between 1 million and 3 million Afghan girls from returning to secondary schools.
Fortunately, Afghanistan’s tyrannical government will never be able to ban the aspiration of Afghan girls for education. The world is mobilizing to ensure that the Taliban cannot keep an Afghan girl from her dreams.
After the collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, Batol Gholami received pleas from several girls in her home province of Baghlan who were desperate to return to their schooling. As the founder of the Afghanistan Youth Leaders Assembly (AYLA), an initiative focused on peace building, education access, and gender equality, Gholami had experience creating enduring institutions. Her initial plan to educate just five students grew quickly as the Taliban banned learning centers. Today, 200 Afghan girls are participating in the second three-month round of AYLA online English courses. Thanks to generous funding from donors in Canada and the United States who provided each student with Wi-Fi access, 300 girls will start a third round of online courses in English and STEM topics in mid-April.
Gholami told me that one student, a young woman who had to stop her regular education after being forced to marry at 15, plans to teach what she learned during the first round of AYLA classes to the girls in her community. Gholami said students “had totally lost their hope” because of the Taliban. Now, she is proud to see them spreading education throughout Afghanistan.
Since October 2021, British resident Dewa Khan has been paying several Afghan teachers to teach 35 Afghan girls secretly in their homes. With the cancellation of girls’ secondary schools, Khan plans to raise funds through the Dewa Trust Foundation to create additional opportunities for Afghan girls to learn online and in private homes. Khan explained that “if a mother is educated, she will make her next two generations be educated. A mother will never let her child become a Taliban.” She has no fear of the Taliban: “They can kill one of us, two of us, a hundred of us, but they cannot kill the idea [or] our courage.”
Italian Fabio Diamante is drawing up and funding plans that would see the creation of in-person classes, online classes, and vocational training offerings for thousands of Afghan girls. Diamante also plans to provide all girls with instruction in social media and entrepreneurship, which he believes will instill resiliency and prepare girls to take part in the global economy.
Of course, efforts to educate girls in Afghanistan are illegal. One special immigrant visa applicant told me that his late mother taught girls secretly during the previous Taliban regime. When they learned of her activities, the Taliban warned her to stop teaching. She continued to educate girls until the Taliban tortured and beat her husband.
Hope is real, however.
Technology allows the world to see into Taliban-run Afghanistan. The international community bore witness to Afghan girls’ profound sadness, as well as the immense bravery that saw them take to the streets to protest Taliban cruelty. Equipped with high-tech solutions, passion, and knowledge, allies worldwide are standing behind the girls of Afghanistan, refusing to allow the Taliban to dim the future for Afghanistan’s next generation of women.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
