By Elyas Ahmadi
Basgul Nikzad says she has helped over 500 girls apply to foreign universities to continue their studies abroad. Now she is finally getting the chance of her own – but despite getting scholarship and her family even selling their home to help find the funds, Basgul is coming up short. But she’s not giving up hope.
Basgul was studying Economics at Kabul University when Taliban authorities in Afghanistan decided last year that girls and women were no longer permitted to attend university. Her male classmates are allowed an education and are now close to graduating.
“Soon, my classmates will graduate from the Bachelors of Business Administration in Kabul University,” she says.
Basgul tried to continue her studies herself after that crushing December decree. “But even with all my efforts, I am behind,” she says.
The star student got 330 out of 360 marks in the university entrance exam in 2019, she says. She had so many options and her whole life ahead of her. But then the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
It’s not the first time that the Taliban has rerouted Basgul’s life. When she was not yet born, her family fled to Pakistan due to the Taliban taking over much of Afghanistan during the 1990s.
Her family were subjected to the difficult conditions of refugees and Basgul spent part of her childhood in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan. According to her, she formed her ideas of love for Kabul by listening to the stories of older people about their memories of Afghanistan.
Basgul’s family eventually returned to Afghanistan in 2005, four years after the Taliban’s first regime was overthrown by the Americans in 2021. Basgul’s life seemed to return to normal. She spent most of her time in school, sewing workshops, and private schools. She says although she had a great desire to study, she was also wanting to be independent since her childhood. For this reason, she started working in a sewing workshop when he was 9 years old.
When the university ban was imposed last December, Basgul was devastated. But along with many other university students, she began to look for opportunities abroad. During this period, she sent applications to more than 44 universities in America and Australia.
She says that after a great deal of effort she managed to land a scholarship from the Asian University for Women. and on February 7, 2022, went to Bangladesh.
Soon she had a part-time job in the university admissions department. She began to help more and more of her peers in Afghanistan to apply for scholarships. “Officially and unofficially, I cooperated with about 500 girls in getting their admission,” she says.
At the same time, Basgul has tried hard to get admission to prestigious universities for herself. To her amazement, she has now been offered three 50 percent scholarships – two in America at the universities of Arizona and Indiana, and one in Australia at the University of Melbourne.
She is most interested in the University of Melbourne, so she accepted their offer of a 50 percent scholarship. She still needed to find about $15,000 for the other 50 percent. Basgul says her family have given everything they can, including selling their home in Ghazni Province, raising $7000 dollars more, so that Basgul not be denied the scholarship.
She needs to find more funds in the next 10 days or the scholarship may be rescinded. To that end, Basgul has set up a godundme to help raise the funds.
Basgul believes her big dreams are not out of reach yet. She is still focused on working one day as a researcher or university professor in a prestigious scientific institution. But all the while, she wants to help the Afghan girls, who are deprived of all their rights, at every stage of their lives.
Basgul says she has been through the pain of refugees, discrimination, and displacement, but losing the scholarship is a pain she hopes to never experience.
