Consider This from NPR - Life For Afghan Women And Girls Under Taliban Rule

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

One year after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, the lives of women and girls have changed dramatically.Girls are no longer permitted to attend secondary school. Women are blocked from working in most sectors. And they are under orders to cover themselves in public. Rangina Hamidi was the acting minister of education when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. We hear about her decision to leave the country and her yearning to return. Additional reporting in this episode comes from NPR's Steve Inskeep and Diaa Hadid.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Earlier this month, a couple days before the anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, about two dozen women marched down a main street in Kabul chanting, bread, work, freedom. This rare show of defiance came to an abrupt halt when Taliban security forces

opened fire above the women's heads to disperse them. Life for Afghan women has changed drastically over the past year under Taliban rule. The new government has banned girls from secondary school, ordered them to cover up, and pressured most women to leave their jobs. That was the case for Mujdan Noor. Noor comes from a family where women have worked for generations. My mother was a teacher. Also, my brothers and sisters, all of them are educated and went to university. And so did she. She attended college and started teaching in one. She was a university professor for 11 years. Eventually, she became the dean

of social sciences at Badakhshan University. At one point, she was overseeing 19 male professors. At first, they could not, as you know, Badakhshan is a rural province and also most of them are very religious men. And at first, they didn't accept me. Until she showed them an official letter from the Ministry of Higher Education signed by the university's president confirming her authority. They had no choice but to accept her. And so, Noor led the department for three years. Of course, this was back when the U.S. military was still in Afghanistan and when the U.S. was backing the Afghan government. It was a more welcoming time for women. But then, last August, the Taliban took over and a new chancellor took

charge. And Noor's job started to change. And he said to me, you are my former colleague, and also we should have friendly relations, but I should say to you that now it's your job that priests, students to cover black hijabs. Noor was now supposed to make sure that female students covered themselves. There were other rules too. Female students could only be on campus in the morning. And Noor herself, as a woman, was told that she should not attend faculty meetings, even though she was a dean. They were very serious, very serious. I thought that my chancellor, his personality was completely changed before the Taliban, after the Taliban.

And his behavior with me, before that he was friendly with me and sometimes we talked with each other. But after that, no, he was a very dictatorial person with me. Her colleagues at the university hadn't changed. They were the same ones she'd known for years. The rules under which they all operated hadn't really changed either. But what did change, she says, were their attitudes. Most of my colleagues, they completely changed now. They think they are very powerful and this government is their governance and also they

have the right to push down others, to govern others and manage others. They think like this. After a few months, Noor started to feel unsafe in Badakhshan and tried to get a transfer to Kabul. She took leave and then the university dismissed her for missing work. She can't say that she was officially fired for being a woman, only that she has been fired. Consider this. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they promised they would respect women's rights within Islamic law. But they prevented teenage girls from returning to secondary schools. They blocked women from returning to secondary schools. They blocked women from working in most sectors. And they ordered women to cover up from head to toe

in public. A year on, many Afghan women are finding that their rights are gradually diminishing. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, August 22nd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Sakina Jafri waited seven months to return to school. She's 18 years old and like tens of thousands of high school-age Afghan girls, she was ordered to stay home when the Taliban swept into power last August. In the beginning, they said it was for technical reasons, home when the Taliban swept into power last August.

In the beginning, they said it was for technical reasons, but when the girls tried to return in March, they were sent home. Jafri says Taliban officials arrived and told them that girls over grade six were not allowed to study. She says, some of my classmates began weeping. We were so excited to return, but now we don't know what will happen to us. Despite repeated calls to reopen schools for girls, the Taliban have yet to allow girls to return to secondary school. The Afghan minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Khanifi, spoke earlier this month

about women standing in the current government. He said, our mothers and sisters want dignity and they want chastity and the hijab. And he suggested that the foreigners are trying to prevent that. Rangina Hamidi was Afghanistan's acting minister of education from 2020 until last August, when the Taliban took over Kabul. The decision to flee Afghanistan was not an easy one for her.

Finally, after one week of debating, debating in the head really, emotionally, whether we should leave or not, I think finally my motherly instincts and then the fact that my immediate family, my mother and sisters and extended family members who were living in America, were pleading with me to please not allow the opportunity for them to suffer yet one more time. Because if the audience or if you remember, my family did lose my father to a side bomber in 2011. In Kandahar. Exactly. Finally, I think we had no choice but to look at the deadline that was in our face. The clock was ticking, literally. August 31st was going to be the last planes to leave. Ultimately, we had to.

Hamidi was one of the lucky ones. She was a former official in the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, and she's a U.S. citizen. Her daughter now is in seventh grade. So think about this. If Hamidi had not left Afghanistan with her family last year, her daughter's formal education would now be over. I asked her if she ever thinks about that as she watches her daughter now do her homework or go to class. You know, Alsa say this was the main

reason why I ultimately had to make the decision to leave. Because I knew Zara would not have, at least immediately, she would not have a future under that administration. And of course, dropping her off to school, picking her up from school, you know, listening to her little mind growing and learning and debating. This is an experience that I'm privileged as a parent, as a mother in particular, to witness and watch. And I know that millions and millions of parents today in Afghanistan, particularly with girls Zahra's age, are not able to provide that opportunity for their girls. And what are you hearing from people back home about how girls there are still trying

to continue their education despite the new rules? How are they doing that? You know, and it's really a case by case basis. Parents who were educated or who are educated and still remain, they're trying their best to get the books and continue on homeschooling. Some areas in the northern part of Afghanistan, there are about six or seven provinces. Nobody really exactly knows which provinces exactly, but what we're hearing is that schools have continued for girls up until 12th grade in those provinces. I've had families contact me and asking whether these families should consider sending their girls to

Pakistan across the border to complete their schooling. Now, what are the implications of going and starting a new system and then completing it. And even when it's completed, the credentials or the diploma that these girls may not transfer. And so there's just a lot of logistical problems. And then ultimately, the question comes to if the Ministry of Education of Afghanistan does not recognize the forms of education we are providing to girls through all these alternative pathways. What can the girls then do with that knowledge other than use it to their best advantage, but without any official paperwork to? Yeah. Well, let me ask you as someone who was a leader in Afghanistan and

making sure that girls and women received an education there. What is it like for you personally to picture all of these efforts, these lengths that these girls have to go to, to continue learning? I mean, it breaks my heart as a leader, as a woman, as a mother, because I don't know if you remember, Elsa, but I myself was stopped from going to school in grade three when I was a refugee living in Pakistan, an Afghan refugee living in Pakistan. And one of the reasons why my parents made the decision to come all the way to America back in 1988 was to be able to enable their five daughters, or at that time, four daughters when we came to America,

to continue school. And so, of course, this is very personal and a very emotional issue to me. I'm not surprised that in the areas where girls' education has continued today, in spite of the Taliban wanting to stop it, the regions that continue to provide education to girls are the regions that were the most served and the most invested in. And so that fact needs to be considered when we're making policies and programs, because areas that do receive attention and consistent service, those are the areas that flourish. And now we're seeing the results of that. You know, the last time that you and I spoke, you said that when you were younger, when you returned to Afghanistan after finishing college in the U.S., you said that there

was this, quote, magnetic force that kept you in Afghanistan longer than you had originally expected. And I'm curious, do you still feel that pull now? Do you think you will ever return to your country? I'm ready to return tomorrow if I can. You know, my heart, my soul, my mind is all in Afghanistan. I'm physically in America right now in my adopted home and I'm forever grateful to this opportunity. And, you know, Zahra, my daughter is the reason why I'm still here. But I'm ready to go back tomorrow if I know that my daughter can have an opportunity to grow in the manner in which I want her to grow and that I can also be able to survive. And I'm not afraid of death. I've accepted that that's part of reality. Having lived in Afghanistan for 20 years and the risks that we all took on a daily basis, I consider service of my people, of my women, of my girls, as an honest spiritual duty

where I know that I can be far more beneficial to them when I'm closer to them than when I'm afar, but I'm ready to go as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Rangina Hamidi was Afghanistan's acting minister of education until last year. She is now a professor of practice at Arizona State University. This episode also featured reporting from NPR's Steve Inskeep and Dia Hadid. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.