Inside Afghanistan’s Secret Schools for Girls

The Taliban have banned education for millions of Afghan girls. Times journalists examined classrooms where students, teachers and parents continue to resist by defying the rules.

Ayesha goes to a secret school six days a week, mainly to keep seeing people outside her home. It’s the only way to avoid total isolation under Taliban rule, she says. It’s the only way to feel alive.

“Without that connection,” she said, “I don’t know what would happen to me.”

Now 18, Ayesha once dreamed of studying psychology at university. The Taliban ended that dream when they banned formal education for girls beyond sixth grade in 2022.

But Ayesha has been defying the Taliban’s rules for years, sitting in a classroom hidden behind the corridors of a primary school. Thousands of such programs operate across the country under the Taliban’s radar.

Clandestine schools were once seen as a stopgap, a way for girls to keep up with their education until the Taliban were gone. But five years after the Taliban’s return to power, nearly 2.5 million Afghan girls have been locked out of secondary school.

They can go to religious schools or study at home with private instruction. But across the country, girls are risking arrest by going to school in secret. Others fail sixth grade on purpose, to remain in their classrooms for as long as possible.

Principals, teachers and parents operate the schools through a clandestine effort, fighting for what they fear may be a lost cause: to save a generation of girls from ignorance.  The Taliban’s leaders do not appear willing to rescind the ban, even while some local officials tolerate the secret schools, worried about denying their own daughters an education.

In interviews with more than 50 students, educators, therapists and parents, many said they feared the ban would do permanent damage — to girls and to Afghanistan’s social fabric. All asked to be identified only by their first names, for fear of retaliation.

Even girls who finish their education have few prospects; the Taliban have banned women from most jobs, and opportunities to go abroad are scarce. Reports of suicidal thoughts, self-harm and rates of underage marriage are on the rise, according to teachers and humanitarian organizations.

Nevertheless, some girls refuse to give up their fight for an education.

“We are also part of this society,” Ayesha said. “Just let us be who we want to be.”

- Author: Elian Peltier, The New York Times

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