Najiba stood outside Kabul University’s student affairs department, her brother by her side, waiting for her turn among around a dozen young women and men. She was accepted at journalism school after she took the national university entrance exam held during the former government.
Had everything gone as planned, she would be at the students affairs to officially enroll and start her classes. But this wasn’t the case. She was there to defer her studies for a year even before she started.
Najiba is among an increasing number of female students who are temporarily dropping out of universities after the Taliban imposed restrictive regulations on them on the campuses and in the hostels.
Like Najiba, most female students defer for one year just to wait and see what happens next. Sometimes students make their own decisions, thinking it may not be worth it to continue studying. And sometimes families encourage or even force them to drop out because they see no future for their daughters after they graduate.
Najiba said her father was worried about her being alone in Kabul, hundreds of miles from Bamyan province where her family lives.
“It is not a good time for girls to be alone and away from their families and live in the hostel. Kabul isn’t the old Kabul anymore,” Najiba, 20, was told by her father.
“My brother also vehemently opposes me studying in Kabul,” she said.
Najiba added that the results of her 12 years of hard work were “leveled to the ground” due to the Taliban’s return to power.
The Taliban imposed mandatory hijab on campuses, forcing girls to cover their entire body and face by burqa or other types of veils. Then they applied a gender segregation plan in universities, based on which the male students go to their classes on even days, and their female classmates on odd days.
The Taliban haven’t allowed most women to return to work after they seized power, a disappointing reminder for female university students that they may not be allowed to work after they graduate.
The students defer for a variety of reasons, such as poverty, the restrictions on campuses on female students, lack of prospects, and the family opposition to their daughter’s education, according to a source who works at the student affairs department of Kabul University. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said the number of female students applying for deferral has increased dramatically this year.
Shabnam, 23, a law student at Kabul University, said she had to defer for one year because she sees no future for herself, and that she needs to work as a tailor to help her father feed the family of six.
She may not be able to work in law-related fields after she graduates because she can’t be a lawyer or a judge under the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islam. She asked us to use a pseudonym to protect her identity.
21-year-old Fatima, a student of fine arts at Kabul University, said she defers for one year because the new rulers aren’t supporters of art and artists.
“The Taliban practically removed women from television and cinema screens,” she said, adding that she hopes the situation changes in favor of women after her deferral ends, so she can restart her studies.
Angela, 23, a female university student, said her husband started opposing her studies after the Taliban’s return to power.
“My husband says that the Taliban do not allow girls to go to school, how do they allow them to work in the government or other organizations?” she said.
Angela, who also asked us to use a pseudonym to conceal her identity, said she told her husband that she would quit university forever, but in fact she deferred only for one year, hoping for a positive change next year.
