KABUL: When Salma was suddenly forced to stop her education in the eighth grade, she was left in limbo, every day waiting to return to the classroom. Almost three years later, the hope has faded not only for her, but also more than a million Afghan girls above the age of 13 who are no longer allowed to attend school.
Secondary schools for girls were suspended in September 2021, a month after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The ban resulted in about 1.1 million girls being denied access to formal education.
For Salma and her friends, it was an end to their dreams of the future.
“I used to go to school every day. Every morning felt very exciting. We would meet our friends and teachers. We used to play together, eat and, of course, study,” she said.
“Every time I sat with my classmates, we would talk about our dreams and plans. I always wanted to be a teacher, my friend wanted to become a doctor, another one wished to become a computer engineer ... Everything changed so suddenly.”
Neither appeals at home nor international pressure on the Taliban administration have since helped to lift the ban, which authorities have repeatedly said was an “internal matter.” The only education the Taliban have allowed for girls is at madrasas, Islamic schools that focus on religious training.
Some of Salma’s colleagues tried to continue their learning and took private lessons online.
“But they banned those classes as well,” she said. “We just pass days and nights without doing anything meaningful. Our lives have become purposeless.”
The ban was later extended to universities, with more than 100,000 female students blocked from finishing their degrees.
Testimonies of girls and young women such as Salma are now being collected under the “Iqra” campaign by Afghan activists trying to amplify their voices.
The word “iqra,” meaning “read” in Arabic, was the first word of the Qur’anic revelation, which is interpreted by many Muslims as emphasizing the importance of education in Islam.
The campaign is organized by Musawer and Rawadari, two civil society organizations working for children’s education and human rights.
“We started the Iqra campaign as we were getting closer to the 1,000 days of school closure for girls in Afghanistan. We were so saddened and really grieved by it because every day is a day that will never come back for these young women. They can never go back and be of the same age and go back to school,” Shaharzad Akbar, director of Rawadari, told Arab News.
Rawadari has been contacting girls across Afghanistan, asking how it feels to be out of school for so long, how it has affected them, and what was it that they wanted.
“Their main demand is the reopening of schools and universities so that they can continue their education. When you talk to an 11-12-year-old in other parts of the world, they will talk about personal ambitions. But for almost all of these girls, they are talking about serving their communities,” Akbar said.
“Almost every single person said I wanted to be educated so I can serve Afghanistan and my people. That was really moving. What a waste that they will not be able to serve in the ways that they want to serve because they are banned from education.”
Women activists and education experts say the ban on girls’ education has already damaged the entire social system.
Fazila Muruwat, former head of the Kunar Teachers’ Education College, said that the restriction is taking a toll on both students and educators.
“People are hopeless and sad,” she said. “Female teachers are also forgetting a lot of what they have learned and taught before.”
Mahbob Mowahed, principal of a private school in Kabul, highlighted the damaging psychological and social consequences of the ban.
“In order to have a progressive and independent country, it is imperative for everyone to have access to education, which means that men, women, boys and girls should have the opportunity to learn,” he said.
“Women are an important part of the society and we cannot keep them illiterate forever. Even religion cannot be properly learnt without education.”
Fears are growing that the prolonged denial of education is resulting in another lost generation in Afghanistan.
“An entire generation was thrown into darkness. This is such a loss that Afghanistan will not be able to compensate for it for decades. It is not just a problem of girls but it is a discussion of the survival of Afghanistan,” Shafiqa Khpalwak, director of Musawer, told Arab News.
“I don’t know what the society will be like if girls don’t go to school and remain illiterate ... This is a human disaster. This is a violation of human dignity.”

PARIS: Climate activists in the United States and Europe are planning protests at airports, banks and the Olympic Games in a summer of stunts they have defended as necessary even if their tactics differ.
From blocking highways to spray painting jets and the megaliths at Stonehenge, and throwing food at artworks, some climate activists have turned to more provocative tactics since the Covid-19 pandemic put an abrupt end to the mass marches spurred by Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement.
The last 12 months have been the hottest ever recorded and with swathes of the world blanketed in extreme heat, campaigners have heavy-polluting corporations and business interests in their sights.
A22 Network, an alliance of activist groups committed to non-violent protest, said it was planning to disrupt airports in eight countries over the northern hemisphere summer.
Protests are planned in the UK, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, US, Scotland and Norway, UK-based activists from the alliance told AFP.
Global aviation is responsible for around 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions, more than the annual carbon footprint of Brazil and France combined.
“Our resistance will put the spotlight on the heaviest users of fossil fuels and call everyone into action with us,” Just Stop Oil, one of the groups that embraced more controversial forms of protests, said in a statement.
UK police said they pre-emptively arrested 27 supporters from Just Stop Oil before the protest had even begun under laws that make it illegal to conspire to disrupt national infrastructure.
But Gabriella Ditton, a spokesperson for the group, said the arrests hadn’t deterred them.
“While we face the massive crisis that we are in, we can’t stop,” she told AFP.
They are demanding governments sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, which seeks a halt to the expansion of fossil fuels and the phasing out of coal, oil and gas.
In the US, activists have been targeting Wall Street and barricading the entrances to major banks and firms that finance, insure and invest in fossil fuel companies.
Organizers of “The Summer of Heat” campaign have vowed “joyful, relentless non-violent direct action to end fossil fuel financing” over the coming months.
Notably in Europe, Extinction Rebellion (XR), once notorious for shutting down bridges over the Thames River in London, have shifted their main focus from mass civil disobedience to building an inclusive grassroots movement.
This summer, they are calling on governments in the UK and France to establish citizen assemblies on climate and nature, while picketing the companies insuring the fossil fuel industry.
Gail Bradbrook, XR’s co-founder, told AFP their new-look approach to climate activism strived “to reach more mainstream folks” and do “the deeper work of local organizing.”
They are, however, planning “mass occupations” over the summer — including one at the start of the Olympic Games opening in Paris on 26 July.
Organizers in France say this could last several days but would be “more visible than disruptive,” but have not offered further planning details.
Which approach is best at grabbing attention — and which is better at driving change — has been the subject of debate, particularly following polarizing stunts targeting famous landmarks.
When two Just Stop Oil activists threw orange cornflour on Stonehenge in June “they got a heck more media attention than by spraying paint on airfields,” said Dana Fisher, a sociologist at American University in Washington DC.
The goal of these “shock” actions “is to make people mad,” Fisher said. The more people talked about the protest, the more they discussed the climate issue, she added.
Several studies in the UK and Germany showed that public concern about climate change stayed the same — or even increased — after acts of civil disobedience even if most people were unsupportive of such stunts.
“Historically, there is substantial evidence that shows that the radical flank drives support for the cause and moderate factions,” said Fisher.
But between “glueing yourself to something, blocking a bank or throwing soup, which is more effective, we do not know yet,” she added.
For Jamie Henn, co-founder of campaign group 350.org and director of Fossil Free Media, “confrontational tactics work best when they’re confronting the source of the problem.”
“Mainstreaming the idea that we can finally go fossil free needs to be a top priority for the climate movement,” he said.
Laura Thomas-Walters, a social scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said political change was achieved “by targeting the people of power propping up the status quo, and we need to do it in a sustained way.”