By Laila Yousufy
On Sunday, August 15, final-year university student Gulbakht Nikzad gathered in a classroom with her classmates to discuss plans for their graduation ceremony in Kabul’s Education University. They were excited: four years of hard work was being celebrated.
But suddenly they heard shouting. “Run, run quickly!” someone screamed from the corridor, Nikzad remembers. “The Taliban has entered the city!”
“I can’t forget that day,” said 22-year-old Nikzad. “We were frightened. As we said goodbye, we were shaking,” recalled the management student. “We wondered if it was our last day. We still think it might have been.”
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid August, the group has “temporarily” banned almost all women’s work and education. The group says it is working on a framework to allow women to return to school and education, but has not provided a timeline.
However, the Taliban’s higher education ministry has said that women will be allowed to attend university but only in “Islamic dress” and once the classrooms have been divided by gender. “We will not allow boys and girls to study together,” said Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the Taliban’s higher education minister, in a press conference on September 12.
On Monday, October 18, the group further clamped down, ordering that private universities, which have operated as they wish, including co-education, begin following the Taliban’s rules.
“I feel as if the Taliban took away everything and I am left with nothing, not even my dreams,” siad Nikzad, who was volunteering at a public school where she was due to begin her first job as a teacher after graduating.
Before the Taliban came, she was set to defend her degree on October 2, a day she had long planned for in advance. “I made a dress to wear on the defence day. It took me several days to figure out the color and the design, I wanted it to be something special,” she said. “Now, every time I look at the dress, I am in pain.”
