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AFGHANISTAN - UNDERGROUND GIRLS
SCHOOL DEFIES TALIBAN EDICT, THREATS
Photo
- A girl reads aloud in an informal school in Spina, Afghanistan. Less than
half the class has textbooks that have made their way from Kabul. Kevin Sieff / The Washington Post
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Afghanistan
- Underground Girls School Defies Taliban Edict, Threats
By Kevin Sieff -
April 25, 2012
SPINA, Afghanistan — Every
morning in this mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, four dozen girls sneak through a square
opening in a mud-baked wall, defying a Taliban edict.
A U.S.-funded girls school about
a mile away was shuttered by insurgents in 2007, two years after it opened.
They warned residents that despite a new government in Kabul and an
international aid effort focused on female education, the daughters of Spina
were to stay home. For a while, they all did.
Then two brothers, among the few
literate men in the village, began quietly teaching math, reading and writing
to their female relatives in a living room on the edge of town. They wanted to
keep the classes small, they said, to stay off the Taliban’s radar. That turned
out to be impossible.
The United States and its allies
have spent millions of dollars on female education in the past decade, and
Afghan and Western officials have pointed to the issue as one of the most
hopeful changes of the post-Taliban era. Female enrollment in public schools
has risen from 5,000 under the Taliban to 2.5 million, according to the
Afghan Education Ministry.
But Afghanistan is rife with
places like Spina, where formal efforts to educate women and girls have crumbled. About
2 million Afghan girls do not attend school.
Those who do sometimes face
threats. Last week, suspected militants poisoned more than 100 schoolgirls in
northern Afghanistan, according to Amanullah Iman, a spokesman for the
Education Ministry, who said an investigation into the incident was ongoing.
The girls are recovering.
Because of threats, several
schools in eastern Afghanistan have been closed in the past few months, reversing what had been a positive trend, said Vidhya
Ganesh, the deputy country representative for UNICEF.
The insurgency had already forced
the closure of dozens of girls schools beginning in the middle of past decade,
when insurgents started to return to Afghanistan. Many of the schools were
built and funded by the United States, and many never reopened. In some
villages, the schools have gone underground, hidden in living rooms and
guesthouses, as they were during the Taliban’s reign.
“It’s risky for the teachers and
it’s risky for the students, but these underground schools show the thirst
people have for education under the Taliban,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a
parliamentarian who ran her own underground school when the Taliban held power
in Kabul in the 1990s.
“It doesn’t feel much different
from those years,” said one of the brothers in insurgent-infested Spina. “We
live in a community very far from democracy and freedom.”
‘Something from nothing’
When the insurgency arrived in
this patch of Paktika province in 2005, it did so with great force and little
resistance. The absence of Afghan or American security forces meant fighters could
wield weapons freely and threaten residents without consequence. The warning to
girls went unchallenged.
But word soon spread about the
underground girls school — part of a shadow education system developed in
places such as Spina to elude the Taliban. The full extent of the system is not
known, but American and Afghan officials say such underground networks are not
uncommon in places with a large insurgent presence.
First, young students — between 5
and 12 years old — would trickle into the home of the two brothers, who for
security reasons insisted that their names not be published. Then, teenagers
started arriving, the brothers said, a particularly rare and controversial
development in eastern Afghanistan, where females are expected to remain home upon
reaching adolescence.
The brothers could hardly believe
the turnout, which at once worried and excited them. They named the school
after their great uncle, Namizad, a religious scholar.
“The girls just kept coming.” one
brother said. “They were so eager, like they were starving.”
When a U.S. army platoon made a
rare visit to Spina this month, soldiers saw the school as an example of
resilience in the face of a failed development project, a sign of hope in a
dismal place. In recent months, according to U.S. officials, the Taliban in
Paktika have robbed teachers of their salaries to buy an 82mm mortar and
shells.
“I want to thank you for your
courage,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor told the brothers and their students
after ducking through the family’s living room doorway.
The girls at the Namizad School
sit on carpets, beginning each class with a recitation from the Koran. A
chalkboard rests on the floor. Less than half the class has textbooks, which
have made their way from Kabul. As in the rest of Spina, there is no
electricity.
“These students are learning
something from nothing,” one of the brothers said.
The brothers have pleaded for
more resources. They have prayed to remain outside the Taliban’s reach. But the
district’s education director claimed he had no money for the education of
girls, the brothers said, in an account confirmed by local officials. And the
Taliban have crept ever closer.
A few months ago, insurgents
posted a letter on the brothers’ door. “We will not allow the education of
girls,” it read, calling the practice “un-Islamic.” The letter warned of a
violent punishment.
The brothers talked about what to
do. Should they end the classes? Should they leave Spina?
The two willowy men in their
early 30s have bright eyes and long brown beards and wear flowing white
salwar-kameez, the traditional dress here. Their backgrounds are strikingly
similar to those of the insurgents who threaten them. Like the Talibs of western
Paktika, the brothers were educated in Pakistani madrassas, or religious
schools. They, too, were raised to believe in a strict adherence to the Koran,
Islam’s holiest book.
“I was so close to joining the
Taliban,” one said. “The men haunting us, they are men we know well.”
‘I want to learn
everything’
The brothers tried to make the
case to the Taliban that they would teach only religious material to their
students. They warned their students of the risk of attending classes, and they
were surprised again when the girls kept coming. There’s now a morning class
for young children and an afternoon class for teenagers. The brothers beam when
talking about recent graduates, eight of whom are now trained midwives.
“I liked the other school better.
We had desks and books,” said Baranah, 11, who was in first grade when the
Taliban closed the U.S.-funded school. “But this place is still good. We still
learn here. I want to learn everything.”
The insurgency has not followed
through with its threat. The brothers wonder if it ever will — if the Taliban’s
recent silence signifies its tacit approval or is merely a prelude to violence.
In some cases, the Afghan
government and international organizations have been able to reach compromises
with insurgents to keep schools open.
“We’re beginning to find ways to
negotiate with anti-government elements,” said UNICEF’s Ganesh.
Some here worry that women’s
rights are being sidelined as the United States prepares to leave and the Afghan
government attempts to satisfy a hard-line constituency. In March, top
religious leaders on the country’s Ulema Council ruled that men are
“fundamental” and women “secondary,” barring women from interacting with their
male counterparts in schools or the workplace.
In Spina, only boys are educated
in the U.S.-funded, one-story yellow building constructed five years ago to
educate girls. Most of the windows are broken, and the paint is chipping.
“That place seemed perfect,” one
brother said. “But we knew it wouldn’t last long.”