By: Hector Palemar

From: U.S. News and World Report as reported by Kevin Whitelaw

KABUL--Nasem Ghalfauri is teaching the geography of Afghanistan in her fourth-grade class at the Mahmoud Hataki School. Twenty-five girls sit on the floor of the dilapidated classroom, listening intently as she uses a tattered map to show Afghanistan's neighbors and key cities. Only a few girls have pen and paper to take notes. After running through Afghanistan's key rivers, she asks the students to recite the names. But Ghalfauri is disappointed when only one girl remembers. Another student pipes up, "We don't have any books. If we could study, maybe we could remember the rivers."

That the girls are in class at all is remarkable. During the Taliban's five-year rule in Kabul, girls were forbidden to go to school. And schools should be closed for winter vacation now. (With no heat, students take the winter off instead of the summer.) But over the past month, some of Kabul's schools have reopened their doors to girls and boys for winter remedial courses. Thousands of girls are braving the frigid, decrepit schoolrooms, even though the school year doesn't officially begin until March 21. Teachers are working without pay--female teachers for the first time in five years--eager to begin the long process of overcoming years of neglect that girls suffered under the Taliban.

Make up. It's hard to overstate the amount of work to be done. The literacy rate in the country has dropped below 40 percent for men, and it is believed to be as low as 4 percent for women. Kabul University was largely closed for five years. Outside Kabul, some schools have reopened, but prospects for girls' education in rural, more conservative areas are dimmer. Even in Kabul, nobody seems to have any answers about how to make up for all the lost years of schooling. "The five years of the Taliban cost us 50 years," says Zarin Karamkhail, a headmaster at Al Fatah school.

Not all the girls will be returning. Some who were in high school when the Taliban came now have husbands and children. Others are terribly far behind. Take Ferishta Shaghrasi. A round-faced 15-year-old girl who wants nothing more than to be a doctor, she says her dream seems a bit far-fetched--she is only in second grade at Al Fatah. "I know it's a problem because I lost five years of school, but I am going to try to make up for it," she says. "If I lose my education again, I may lose my life."

The spontaneous reopening of schools has encouraged many aid workers. "Here, people appreciate that the restart of education is an emergency humanitarian intervention," says Peter Medway, the UNICEF director for the Kabul region. "It's something they consider absolutely essential for the revitalization of their country." The Education Ministry has said it plans to give the girls first priority in its programs and funding. Atefa Saleem recently reclaimed her job as vice principal of Al Fatah. When she heard on the radio that girls would be allowed to return to school, she immediately started campaigning for winter courses. After winning permission from the acting minister of education and gathering 50 teachers willing to volunteer their time, she reopened Al Fatah to girls last mo nth.

But the schools are in such terrible shape it's hard to imagine that any learning is possible. Few have electricity or heat. Plastic sheeting, hung in place of windows, is the only concession to winter. Bathrooms, when they operate at all, are filthy. In all, UNICEF estimates, some 2,000 schools nationwide were damaged or destroyed during two decades of civil war. They suffered further insult under the Taliban.

Pencil fights. Afghanistan's crushing poverty just makes everything worse. Four or five students often share an outdated textbook. One teacher was amazed to find two girls coming to blows--over a pencil. And teachers now face girls of a wide range of ages in each class. In a second-grade class at Al Fatah, for instance, the youngest of the 80 girls is 6; the oldest, 16. While many girls were stuck at home for five years, others risked beatings and possible jail time to attend secret classes in teachers' homes.

Many of the girls who went to secret schools will be able to start off in the correct grade for their age, thanks to brave teachers like Injila Niyazmand. She was forced to abandon her university plans when the Taliban came. Instead, she opened a secret school, teaching some 150 girls. On the wall of her tiny, unheated schoolroom are poems written by her students. "We try to fight against the enemies of knowledge and science by studying," one girl, 7, wrote. "The Taliban uses the gun, but we use the pen." Niyazmand, 24 and widowed, plans to return to university, but she will continue to tutor girls in the afternoon.

Of course, it's not just the girls who suffered under the Taliban. In Kabul, nearly three quarters of the teachers were women. When they were barred from teaching, boys sat in impossibly large classes with the few remaining male teachers. The Taliban also mandated so many religious classes that they often took up half the school day. Science classes were mostly outlawed.

Under the new government, science classes will resume and religious subjects will be reduced, although not eliminated. Boys and girls will be taught separately, for now. But some private coed classes have resumed. So many girls joined Massoud Said's beginning English class at a private school last month that it is now evenly split between girls and boys. He says that the girls are learning faster. The boys, he observes, "don't appreciate the value of studying the way girls do now."

Story By Kevin Whitelaw

Return to Home