The reopening of secondary schools for girls across Afghanistan on Wednesday prompted joy and apprehension among the tens of thousands of students deprived of an education since the Taliban’s return to power.
All schools were closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic when the Taliban took over in August last year — but only boys and some younger girls were allowed to resume classes two months later.
Here are the views of five teens on going back to school for the first time this year. In Dasht-e-Barchi, a Kabul district mainly home to minority Shiite Hazaras, 14-year-old Alina Nazari is happy to be going back to class after months away.
The ninth-grade student, whose father is a taxi driver, dreams of becoming a doctor and wants to help rebuild the country.
“I am so happy that schools are reopening," she told AFP from her family home.
“Education is very important and our country needs doctors and engineers. Like mother, not like daughter.
In the southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, Marwa Ayubi worries her life will turn out like her mother’s if she is denied an education.
“My mother does not have good memories from the Taliban’s first regime," said Ayubi, 18, noting that girls were barred from formal education during the group’s first reign from 1996 to 2001.
“But thank God… We are able to go out of our house and now to school," she told AFP.
Still, she worries her education might go to waste if she is prevented from working when she graduates. Women are largely barred from government employment under the Taliban — apart from specialised areas such as health and teaching.
“Once we finish our higher education we should be given work," said Ayubi.