By Behzad Sadiq
Zabul province in south Afghanistan is one of the most inaccessible provinces for girls’ education in the country. Aside from a handful of girls’ schools in the capital Qalat and in a district called Shahjoy, there are no girls’ schools above grade three in the other ten districts*.
Girls’ education was already uncommon in Zabul during the time of Afghanistan’s republic. Of the schools that existed then, girls were less likely to attend compared to other provinces. It is not that school is frowned upon. For boys, it is encouraged. But there are challenges to getting an education.
Zabul has 164 schools but about a third of them – or 58 – aren’t open. Of around 58,500 students currently attending school, only 4000 of them are girls, according to local Taliban authorities.
Mawlawi Mohammad Nasim Nasir, the Taliban deputy director of education in Zabul, says that the only schools that teach girls classes above grade three are in Shahjoy district and Qalat city. So if students from any of the other ten districts wish to continue school beyond grade three, they will have to travel to either the city or to Shahjoy.
Shahjoy district only has one school that teaches classes above grade three. It used used to be a girls’ high school called Baba Hotak, conveniently placed close to the Kabul-Kandahar highway. These days it only teaches classes up to grade six.
In Qalat, in the centre of the province, there are around five schools – four former high schools Bibi Khala, Chehl Dokhtran, Malalai, and Resala, and Sink primary school.
Most of the districts without any formal school rely on community-based education centres. These can be homes or public areas where students gather for classes. Mr Nasir says, by the Taliban’s count, about 21,000 children are being educated in these community centres.
Also, there are two other girls’ schools in Shahre Safa district named Malali Primary School and Aino Ana Secondary School. But they are not open. They were built during the republic in 2013, but remained inactive because they were in areas under the control of the Taliban and it was not considered safe. Both schools were built by the Department of Education at that time, but the doors never opened to girls.
Mawlawi Nasir says that the Taliban is working to increase the number of girls’ schools. But, he adds there is more of a focus on the establishment of religious centers.
“In the future, the leadership of the government will decide on the construction of schools for girls and above the sixth grade,” Mr Nasir says. “We will wait until then.”
Residents in Zabul say that with their daughters having missed out on an education even before the Taliban banned it, they now find most of the girls in the villages are illiterate. Once they reach third grade, usually in a community-based education setup, there is almost no possibility of education continuing for them.
Sayed ul-Rahman, a resident of Shamulzayi district, says that his 12-year-old daughter Bibi Asma is a third-grade student in a community-based centre. If her education were to continue, he would have to move his family to the city. But this is not an option for him.
He said the repercussions of having an illiterate female population are serious. “There are no midwives in our entire region. When we have a female patient at home, we have to go to a male doctor,” he says. “I wanted my daughter to study to become a doctor or a midwife in the future.”
After taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, once of the Taliban’s first decisions was to close all girls’ schools above the sixth grade. The group has repeatedly pledged to reopen them, but there are no clear efforts to do so.
Furthermore, about a month ago the local Taliban authorities in Zabul stopped community-based education centres funded by foreign organizations and confiscated their equipment. The decision left an estimated 14,000 children deprived of education in Zabul alone.
Zarlasht, 16, is a resident of Khak Afghan district of Zabul province. She had quietly continued going to classes at the local community-based education centre but now its closed and there is no opportunity for her to study anywhere else.
Zarlasht says there is no possibility that her family will allow her to travel to the city to continue her education. She dreams of a school being built nearby.
During the previous government of Afghanistan, Mohammad Yosuf was in charge of the Monitoring Department of Education in Zabul. In response to the question of why during the Republic, with all the huge expenses in the education sector, education was not provided for girls in Zabul and more schools were not established, he said that the insecurity and ignorance of the people were the main reasons.
“There were cases [before 2021] when the students of the districts who went to the city to study were thrashed by the Taliban after returning to their districts,” Mr Yosuf said. “The people of the districts were not even allowed to go to the city for education.”
This insecurity extended also to the boys, many of whom were beaten by Talibs in their local districts for pursuing an education.
Only 200 male students from the entire province of Zabul participated in this year’s university entrance exam or Kankor.
* The ten districts without schools are Shamulzayi, Nawbahar, Atghar, Shinkai, Siori, Mizana, Daichopan, Khak Afghan, Arghandab and Shahresafa.
