Alia, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, embarked on a perilous journey of hundreds of kilometers from her remote village to Kabul, all to escape the specter of a forced marriage.
The taxi journey last year, undertaken with her female cousin, was fraught with danger. They faced the constant threat of being stopped by Taliban members, who strictly enforce rules prohibiting women from traveling long distances without a male family escort, known as a mahram.
Remarkably, 19-year-old Alia and her cousin managed to evade detection at Taliban checkpoints, successfully reaching the relative safety of Kabul city.
“I fabricated a story for my family, claiming I was visiting friends and former schoolmates in the capital. That wasn’t true,” Alia confessed. “They weren’t here. The real reason was that if I stayed in Daykundi, I would have been forced into marriage.”
Alia arrived in Kabul with a clear and determined plan: to enroll in an English language course, a rare beacon of opportunity.
Such short-term private courses are a privilege, accessible only to those who can afford the tuition. For most, the only other educational path available is religious instruction.
These two limited options now represent the entirety of educational prospects for Afghan girls and women beyond primary school.
It has been nearly five years since the Taliban regime brutally enforced a ban on formal education for girls over the age of 12. The Taliban have offered a shifting litany of excuses to justify the continued enforcement of this discriminatory prohibition.
Consequently, millions of young women across Afghanistan, like Alia, are growing up denied the fundamental education they desperately desire and critically need.
Their futures are increasingly constrained, often leading to one bleak certainty: early marriage.
Alia’s narrative stands out, and not solely for her extraordinary bravery.
Unusually, Alia hails from a family with some financial means – a stark rarity in a country where, according to the United Nations, three out of four people struggle to meet their basic needs.
This isn’t to say Alia’s family disapproves of her education. On the contrary, they accept her decision to live in Kabul and are even funding her English course. Yet, their support is tempered by the harsh realities of life under the current regime in Afghanistan.
“Before the ban,” Alia recounts, “my parents fiercely encouraged my schooling. They told me I could absolutely achieve my dream of becoming a pilot.”
“But now they say the best path for me is marriage, because I can’t attend school, go to university, or even work.”
Alia has already received multiple marriage proposals. She harbors a profound fear that she might eventually be compelled to accept one, dreading that her future husband’s family might deny her the limited freedoms her own parents currently afford her.
“Some families can be incredibly restrictive,” she explains. “There’s a strong possibility they would tell me to abandon my dreams. I feel absolutely no optimism about that prospect.”
Despite these grim realities, her resolve remains unwavering.
“If my family doesn’t force me into marriage, I will wait,” she declares. “I will fight it until my last breath.”
However, such resistance is incredibly arduous in the face of overwhelming odds.
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In a small, unassuming house nestled in western Kabul, our team met Shama, another young woman whose future was irrevocably altered.
“If the Taliban hadn’t seized power,” Shama laments, “I would be on the verge of completing my schooling. I was so close to realizing my dream of becoming a doctor. That’s all I ever wanted.”
However, just four years ago, at the tender age of 18, she was urged by her mother to marry. Today, she is a mother herself, raising an infant and a toddler, both girls.
Her name, along with those of her family, has been changed to ensure their safety.
Shama’s mother, Kamila – who, after her husband’s death six years prior, toiled as a cleaner to finance her daughters’ education – felt she had absolutely no other recourse.
Kamila feared that her daughter, a young woman of marriageable age, would draw unwanted negative attention and confront severe difficulties if she remained unmarried.
“I was afraid they [Taliban members] would question why I hadn’t married her off,” Kamila confided.
“I desperately wanted her to receive an education, to work, and to contribute to society,” Kamila expressed. “I am illiterate, so I feel like a blind person. But I yearned for my daughters to learn. Shama had so many dreams. Yet, none of them materialized for her.”
The Taliban government’s sweeping educational ban has profoundly impacted the lives of countless women and girls across the nation.
According to the United Nations, should this ban persist until 2030, “over two million girls will be denied access to education beyond primary school in a country already grappling with one of the world’s lowest female literacy rates.”
Shama understands this devastating reality, but finds herself powerless to resist.
“Having a husband isn’t a woman’s sole dream,” Shama asserts with a heavy heart. “She needs to stand on her own feet first, to become independent, and then she can marry and build a family. But I entered this new chapter of my life stripped of all that. My dreams remain painfully unfulfilled.”
Before the Taliban’s oppressive takeover, Shama had, in fact, turned down numerous marriage proposals.
“I rejected them because my education was paramount to me, more important than anything else,” she explained. “What I envisioned for my future was completely at odds with what they [prospective husbands] desired for me.”
Now, she admits to feeling a constant weight of depression, even triggered by watching films that depict women working or studying, stark reminders of her lost aspirations.
Shama acknowledges that her husband treats her kindly, yet the profound sorrow of never having the chance to fulfill her potential remains a persistent, aching void.
“It’s incredibly difficult for me,” she confides. “I feel utterly trapped within these walls. My existence is now solely for my children.”
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Her 18-year-old sister, Nora, now lives with the gnawing anxiety that she will inevitably face a similar, bleak fate.
“I am far too young to marry. I desperately want to continue my education,” states Nora, who frequently dreams of returning to school. “This feels like being in a prison. I’m afraid to go outside because of the government, and at home, my mother insists I must marry.”
Yet, she holds little hope of ever returning to school under the current Taliban regime.
“The Taliban government stated that schools are closed for girls until further notice,” Nora explains. “But it’s been four and a half years now. We cling to the hope of that message every single day.”
Since 2021, the Taliban government’s responses regarding the reopening of schools for girls have consistently evolved, shifting from one flimsy excuse to the next.
In September 2021, during our initial interview with a Taliban spokesperson shortly after their ascent to power, we were assured that schools for girls would indeed reopen. The stated reason for the delay was that they “were working to improve the security situation.”
A year later, the narrative shifted; the new explanation was that “the clerics had concerns regarding the safety of girls traveling to and from school,” with assurances that these issues were being “addressed.”
By 2024, Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesperson for the Taliban government, offered a different rationale, telling me: “We are waiting for the leadership’s decision.”
Just this month, I once again encountered Fitrat, who notably refused to be photographed with a woman or to sit directly across from me during our conversation.
I pressed him on how they could continuously justify the sweeping ban on secondary and university education for women.
He responded by highlighting that “approximately seven million boys and five million girls are currently studying,” attempting to deflect the core issue.
“The restrictions on education above grade six are a separate issue,” he claimed, redirecting us to the Ministry of Education which, he suggested, “hopefully… will provide a satisfactory answer.”
When I conveyed that Afghan women and girls had expressed profound doubt that education would ever be reinstated under Taliban rule, we were once again instructed to refer our questions to the Ministry of Education.
Despite our persistent inquiries to the Ministry of Education regarding this critical matter, no response was ever provided.
While internal disagreements exist within the Taliban administration concerning women’s education, their supreme leader has demonstrably hardened his stance on the issue over the years.
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For women and girls across Afghanistan, the day schools were shuttered remains etched in their collective memory.
“I just cried all day and night,” Alia vividly recalls.
“I couldn’t sleep for a week. I felt as though I was walking around like a corpse.”
“When I see boys my age who have graduated and moved on to university, I feel an intense agony, a burning sensation as if in hell,” she adds with raw emotion.
Women throughout Afghanistan grapple with a multitude of restrictions imposed by the Taliban’s supreme leader, enforced with varying degrees of severity – strictly in some areas, slightly more leniently in others.
These oppressive rules have undeniably instilled a pervasive fear throughout society.
The collective impact of governmental enforcement, combined with instances of self-imposed restrictions born of fear, has rendered women virtually invisible in public life.
Taliban government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat claims, “We have issued thousands of permits for women to run businesses, which constitutes a positive step.”
He further asserted that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – the Taliban government’s moral police – has purportedly resolved over “2,000 cases of women not receiving their rightful share of inheritance” and “assisted 2,500 women who were forcibly married or underage.”
Yet, alarmingly, just this week, the Taliban government cemented rules on child marriage, explicitly stating that a minor girl’s silence can be interpreted as consent to marry, effectively legalizing coercion.
On-the-ground evidence, however, unequivocally indicates a surging prevalence of forced and underage marriages, directly linked to the ban on girls’ education.
Among the women and girls we interviewed, there was a palpable sense that this institutionalized discrimination no longer even elicits shock or outrage; it has become their grim normal.
They universally express a profound feeling of abandonment by the international community.
“If we weren’t forgotten, surely something would have been done by now,” Alia states with a heavy sigh.
“I often wonder,” Nora reflects mournfully, “why were we even born in Afghanistan?”
Nora’s mother, Kamila, offers a poignant message to mothers worldwide.
“When your daughters are permitted to learn and work, allow them that freedom. Let them become independent.”
“Here in Afghanistan, for us, everything is truly over.”
Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson, Mahfouz Zubaide, and Sanjay Ganguly
Summary
Alia embarked on a perilous journey to Kabul, escaping a forced marriage to pursue an English course, a rare opportunity amidst the Taliban’s ban on girls’ formal education. For nearly five years, this ban has forced millions of Afghan girls, including Alia, to abandon dreams of schooling and face the prospect of early marriage. Even her supportive family now suggests marriage as her best option, fearing her limited freedoms will be further curtailed by a future husband.
Other young women like Shama and Nora have similarly seen their educational aspirations crushed, leading to early marriages and profound despair. The Taliban offers shifting, inconsistent excuses for the ban while implementing rules, such as interpreting a minor girl’s silence as marriage consent, thus legalizing coercion. Afghan women universally express feeling abandoned by the international community, grappling with a pervasive sense of hopelessness and a future irrevocably constrained.