By Haniya Frotan
Mahnaz was just 15 when the Taliban returned to power and brought in a blanket ban on older girls attending school. Like many teenage girls in Afghanistan, she was devastated and furious. She was also determined to fight a ban that she saw as senseless.
Within months Mahnaz, now 19, had turned her small home in a remote and impoverished village in southern Afghanistan into a hidden classroom, creating a sanctuary for women and girls trapped in the darkness of illiteracy.
“I never gave up,” she says in a phone interview with Rukhshana Media. “I started [this initiative] from scratch to continue the education of girls and women who need literacy.”
Nearly four years have passed since the Taliban excluded girls over 12 from attending school. Since then, the ban has denied 1.4 million girls access to education, according to the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO. The knock-on effects for young women and girls are devastating, ranging from depression and suicide to forced marriages.
As the restrictions imposed by the Taliban have grown, so has the determination of many young Afghan women like Mahnaz. Alongside online schools and distance learning, secret classrooms like hers have become one of the key ways Afghan women and girls resist the Taliban’s education ban, and examples can now be found across Afghanistan.
The demand is huge, and mostly unmet. When Mahnaz first embarked on the project in 2022 in a small, unfurnished room, she had 30 students and no equipment. “We didn’t have a whiteboard, not even a marker,” she recalls.
Just a few months later, the number of students swelled to 200. By the second year, it had reached 450, 200 of whom were adult women attending literacy classes.
The female literacy rate in Afghanistan is just 22.6%, according to figures from UNESCO – less than half the rate for men and significantly below that of neighbouring countries.
In the two decades after the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan in 2001, the number of girls enrolled in primary school rose from nearly none to 2.5 million, and female literacy almost doubled.
For young Afghan women, the rollback of hard-won rights is particularly devastating. They saw the impact not being able to read had on their mothers, and hoped their own lives would be different.
Mahnaz’s determination to keep going is deep-rooted. Growing up, she says, she was aware that her mother had little agency over her own life because she couldn’t read or write. One story Mahnaz tells encapsulates the power of teaching adult women like her mother to read – and the satisfaction it brings her.
“One of our students in the literacy class managed to find a clinic she needed without any help because she could read the signs,” she says.
“When she told us the story, her eyes sparkled with joy. She proudly said, ‘I’m no longer blind. Now I look at the world around me with open eyes’.”
Such moments help Mahnaz to keep going in the face of manifold challenges, from the risks of running an underground school to the lack of funds to keep it going. With the help of a relative, she hired four teachers in her first year and bought basic educational supplies. But the money only lasted a year.
Struggling with financial difficulties, dealing with the Taliban’s morality police, dealing with families’ fears of Taliban retaliation—each of these challenges alone could be enough to shut down Mahnaz’s secret school.
Image: supplied.
Due to these pressures, the number of students, including girls and adult women in literacy classes, has dwindled to 180.
Poor internet connectivity is another challenge when it comes to using online learning tools in the secret classroom.
“Alongside my own lessons, the girls attend online classes. But in our impoverished area, many lack access to smartphones or reliable internet,” Mahnaz says. “Sometimes, a 20-minute session takes an hour to complete.”
Like all the Afghan women who are giving up their time to teach others, Mahnaz is taking a huge risk. Rukhshana Media is not disclosing any details of her location or the methods she uses to avoid detection by the Taliban, but they are extensive.
Despite the dangers, such initiatives must continue, says Mohammad Sardar Rahimi, who was deputy minister of literacy in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over.
“Such centres represent a form of civil resistance against the educational deprivation of women and girls,” he says They foster hope and mobilize communities. That’s why these efforts – whether online or underground – must continue.”
Rahimi points out that women’s exclusion has knock-on effects for their children, and for society as a whole, because women play such a key part in shaping the next generation.
It is a sentiment Mahnaz holds dear. “I don’t want that cycle to continue,” she says. “The girls in our village must be educated—no matter the cost.”
* Name has been changed to protect identity.
