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March Issue |
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Thirteen-year-old Selma, who dreams of being a pharmacist, reads her
biology text.
Text and photos by Juliette Terzieff
Girls are flooding back to school to resume their education in post-Taliban
Afghanistan.
 n her seventeenth year of
teaching, Nur Afsa believes the chances for shaping a positive future for
Afghanistan have never been better. Though it will be no easy task, she knows it
is vital.
"We have a real future now,
an opportunity to build something for ourselves, our country, without the threat
of rockets and killings hanging over our heads," says the diminutive
37-year-old English teacher.
Like many of her generation,
Afsa can barely remember a time without war. Born and raised in Kabul, she
survived the Russian occupation, brutal civil war, and a murderously despotic
regime. An indestructible sense of hope never left her even in the darkest days
of 1994-95, when rockets rained down on the city.
Now Afsa's struggle has evolved
from one of mere survival. As one of 142 teachers tasked with instructing over
4,500 students at Kabul's Zarghuna High School, she faces an incredible
challenge. "This is the best chance we've ever had to move forward,"
she asserts. "People are tired of the killing and want to live normal,
quiet lives."
What makes Zarghuna so special?
Quite simply, it is a courtyard filled with an entirely female student body, age
6-24. Their excited giggles and chatter would have been unthinkable a year ago,
when the ultraconservative Taliban regime ruled most of Afghanistan.
The girls gather in small groups
to discuss their studies, excitedly pouncing on any foreigner they see to
practice their fledgling English. "What's you name? Where you from?"
they shout ecstatically.
When the Taliban swept to power
in the mid-1990s, women were barred from working and encouraged to remain
indoors at all times. Girls were forbidden education, and hundreds of schools
shut down countrywide.
In the rural areas, rigidly
patriarchal and conservative village elders had long denied girls a proper
education, but the new decrees devastated Afghanistan's urban population.
"Women, you should not step outside your residence," reads a January
1997 public announcement from the Taliban. "Women should not create such
opportunity to attract the attention of useless people who will not look at them
with a good eye." Those caught in improper attire brought down the wrath of
the religious police. Beatings and imprisonment were imposed on the women
themselves as well as their husbands and fathers.
Nowadays, Afghanistan's schools
are overflowing. New students arrive on Zarghuna's doorstep every morning.
"Poor families, rich families, everyone is sending their girls to us,"
explains Zarghuna's principal, Alia Hafezee. "It's like everyone woke up
and realized their children can't make their lives better without
knowledge."
The number of new arrivals at
schools countrywide shocked the international aid community. "This blew our
figures right out of the water," admits Jeaniene Wright, educational
programmer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kabul. "Education was
forcibly denied to so many for so long that families are literally racing to get
their children--boys and girls--enrolled in classes."
Based on 1996 enrollment figures
of 900,000 students countrywide, UNICEF prepared 1.2 million back-to-school
packs consisting of notebooks, pencils, erasers, and other necessities. Current
enrollment, split equally between boys and girls in the urban areas, is
estimated at 3 to 3.2 million, with tens of thousands more waiting to start
classes in September.
For dedicated educators like
Afsa, this fervent drive for change is like walking in a dream. "Sometimes
it is hard to believe it's real; we are back in school again," she says
quietly. Though shy and softspoken, Afsa dared to violate Taliban decrees by
holding secret English classes. With the help of her mother, who would sit by
the window and watch the street for potential visitors, and two modern-minded
brothers, Afsa taught twenty students three times a week for five years. As a
cover, the girls also learned to knit and sew. If any Taliban caught them and
asked their purpose, the girls could provide an acceptable reply.
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Women wearing burkas pass damaged housing on their way to Kabul's main
market, the Titanic Bazaar.
Afsa shrugs off any notion of
bravery. "It was my duty," she says, "and we all hoped someday
the Taliban would leave. The girls had to be prepared."
When the Taliban abandoned Kabul
last November, it was days before she dared sneak out onto the streets wearing
the burka--a garment that the Taliban decreed all females over thirteen must
wear to cover their entire bodies. When Afsa wandered past Zarghuna High School,
students and teachers were already clamoring to get in its doors.
"I saw all those girls and
women and the excitement. It made me brave," she recalls. She strode up to
the doors, lifted her burka, and stepped inside to offer her services.
A family affair
 ducating the eager students at
Zarghuna has rapidly become a unifying focus for the local community. Many of
the younger girls had never set foot inside a school before classes officially
began in March, and most of the older girls had long since forgotten what they
learned as children.
"It has been a logistical
nightmare but one we welcome with total pleasure,"
says principal Hafezee, who split the two groups into separate learning tracks.
"And the families? Oh, you should see them," she exclaims. "Even
the parents who cannot read are coming to the school several times a week to
check on their daughters, asking what they can do to help."
With all the surrounding
excitement, Zarghuna and the estimated 4,500 other operational schools in
Afghanistan are facing serious problems. Two decades of warfare damaged many
school buildings. Even where classes can proceed, basic supplies such as books,
desks, and chairs are in short supply. "The biggest problem is teachers.
There simply are not enough of them, and many of those teaching are in need of
better qualifications," explains the UNICEF's Wright.
In a country where illiteracy is
estimated at 90 percent for females and 65 percent for males, it is not
surprising that the few teachers around are doubling up on classes. They are
using battered, decades-old textbooks and teaching classes ranging in size from
40 to 100 students. Educators receive 12 million Afghanis ($35) a month for
their herculean efforts.
"They have a really long
way to go before the educational system is fully operational. But there is so
much energy from the people, you think it has got to work. It may take ten
years, but it will work," adds Wright, who says Afghanistan is one of the
biggest logistical campaigns ever undertaken by UNICEF. Aid agencies are
struggling to come to grips with the scope of the problems. They are banding
together to plan teacher-training programs, rehabilitate damaged school
buildings, and issue appeals for essential supplies.
For students like
thirteen-year-old Selma, the hardships pale in comparison to the possibilities.
"I want to be a pharmacist. My father says it is a good dream, that people
need doctors and heath-care workers," she says in near-perfect English. She
is engrossed by her classes in social studies, science, Persian, English,
biology, and mathematics. For Selma, sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor
and sharing one book with three other students is a privilege.
"We waited so long for
this, and I always knew things would change. Now people listen when I talk. I am
free," she explains, her face darkening only briefly with recollections of
life under the Taliban.
"Imagine it! Little girls
my age had to wear the burka. Not chose to, had to. Imagine what it was like for
us."
Selma's father, an engineer,
taught the lively teenager and her two younger sisters English, basic math, and
geography at home. Their mother, a fluent French speaker, whispered to them of
literature and culture, subjects frowned upon by the Taliban.
Her father is now working to aid
reconstruction efforts in the battered Afghan capital, while her mother is
teaching adult women basic reading and writing skills. "We simply could not
cope without the help of the families. Their support and constant efforts are
key to success," insists Afsa.
Future hopes
want Afghanistan to be like
other countries," Selma says. "It will take time and work, but our
nation has survived harder tasks than this," she continues with an
understanding startlingly profound in one so young.
The United Nations estimates
that Afghanistan will need $45 billion over the next ten years just to begin the
long road to recovery. More than two decades of warfare has left little
infrastructure intact. The destruction of irrigation systems and widespread
mining of fields have decimated agriculture, the economy's backbone.
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Rampant poverty still forces some children to work for their food.
Access to food and health care is so poor in some areas that Afghans must spend
up to five days to reach dependable supplies. "Every facet of life has been
affected," agrees UNICEF's Wright.
The international community
plans to provide desperately needed assistance, but real change will have to
come from individual Afghans themselves. Despite notable improvements since the
Taliban fell, aid agencies consider the progress merely a drop in the bucket.
There are no guarantees that the
limited stability Afghanistan now enjoys will survive the historically bloody
ethnic rivalries that facilitated the Taliban's rise to power. While the former
regime is in tatters, warlords from various factions and ethnicities remain the
dominant power in many of the country's thirty-two provinces. Their inability to
compromise led to several violent flare-ups in the first half of 2002. "We
want peace and security, and that's what we ask from President [Hamid] Karzai--so
that the children, who are the future, will be able to carry this country
forward," says Hafezee.
While Karzai strives to balance
the often-conflicting interests of the country's main ethnic groups--the Pashtun,
Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, and Turkmen--Hafezee will be looking at improvements on a
smaller scale. "We have no real playground, no library or science
laboratories for the girls. Those are things we will be looking to establish as
soon as possible," she elaborates.
Already, dozens of
nongovernmental organizations have visited Zarghuna for needs assessments.
UNICEF has painted the school and provided over twenty thousand books. School
officials hope to receive hundreds of desks before winter weather increases the
health risks to students.
For the girls kneeling on thin
carpets in Afsa's eighth-grade class,
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A girl removes her burka upon arriving at school.
the more immediate concern is a valiant
struggle to grasp the difference between "this" and "that,"
"these" and "those." They dutifully recite sentences
carefully printed on the blackboard and groan audibly when corrected. "The
students are working so hard, and so are we," Afsa whispers as the girls
tackle an in-class writing assignment. "We have a lot of time to make up
for."
Afsa hopes to take courses to
improve her somewhat
shaky English conversation skills. The other thing she
wants is to shed her burka once and for all.
"I still wear it on the
street," she says, conspiratorially leaning over to open her bag and reveal
the telltale blue material. In fact, she is not alone. Most of the teachers and
students shed the heavy garment only once they have crossed into the school's
compound. Others wear the slightly less conservative Pakistani-style shalwar
kamiz with a head scarf.
"People returning from
outside Afghanistan are a bit braver than those who stayed and lived through
it," she adds somewhat sheepishly. "I have hope, and I believe, but
that doesn't mean the fighting is over. And some risks just aren't worth
taking."
Juliette Terzieff is a photojournalist based in Sofia, Bulgaria.
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