KABUL: A month after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 girls have been prohibited from attending secondary school leaving thousands of classrooms and buildings empty.
According to official estimates, there were about 4,000 secondary and high schools for girls in Afghanistan before the education ban was put in place.
Afghanistan officially recognized about 20,000 schools as of August 2022, out of which only about half had functional buildings and about 5,000 were damaged after the war,
Salma, who is now in the fifth grade, told Arab News that before the Taliban stopped secondary education for girls, some of her friends had attended her school in Kabul with their older sisters.
“They didn’t want to come alone. It’s sad to lose my friends,” she said. “It’s even more upsetting to think that we will not be able to come to our school after two years. We will graduate after grade six and then there will be no future for us after that,” she said.
An official from the Afghan Ministry of Education said girls’ schools are active only up to the sixth grade.
Najla Ahmadzai, a public school teacher in Kabul said as buildings that once housed the older girls are now empty, they could be used to accommodate more girls in lower grades.
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“Previously, we didn’t have sufficient space to admit more girl students. We had very low admission rates. Now that we have more space, we can admit more girls, especially in grades one to three,” she said.
Bibi Laila, 16, who is among those who are not allowed to attend school said the abandoned buildings are painful reminders of what was taken from girls in Afghanistan.
“We have schools, we have buildings, we have teachers, books and everything. We can go to school starting tomorrow. But the (Taliban) policy is stopping me and thousands of other girls from becoming educated and achieving our dreams and hopes,” said Laila.
She added that appeals at home or international pressure on the Taliban administration have not helped to lift the ban on girls’ education. The ban on education for girls was also extended to universities, with more than 100,000 female students stopped from completing their degrees.
