Inside Afghanistan: How Girls Are Secretly Fighting Back with Education

Published by Global Voices | Republished by Infinitrix News | April 29, 2025 SOURCE

Illustrative visual depicting Afghan girls pursuing education in secret amidst oppression. This is an artistic representation, not a real-world photograph. © Infinitrix News.

Kabul, Afghanistan — Women and girls in Afghanistan, despite harsh restrictions, are continuing to pursue education through underground and online initiatives.

Today, for millions of young women and girls in Afghanistan, education is not just a right — it is an act of defiance. Since the Taliban regained control in 2021, access to learning has been brutally stripped away.

Afghanistan awoke to a new reality on Sunday, August 15, 2021. A woman who prefers to remain anonymous recalls stepping outside and hearing from a shopkeeper that the Taliban had taken control of the capital, Kabul. The atmosphere was tense; fear and uncertainty were etched onto every face. People hurried home, their expressions filled with worry. Just before the Taliban's return, the future had seemed promising.

“I cried a lot because I knew all my hopes and dreams were shattered.” Faced with the uncertainty of life under Taliban rule, the family made the difficult decision to leave Kabul and move to their village in Dara-e-Pech in the northeastern Kunar province.

Start of a New Dark Era

“After the Taliban took over the country, all women’s rights and activities in Afghanistan were trampled upon and stopped,” explains Hela, a participant of the Leadership Program developed by the Afghans for Progressive Thinking (APT).

APT is a youth-led nonprofit organization in Afghanistan that actively addresses human rights crises, with a specific focus on women’s rights, while simultaneously promoting girls’ access to education through creative and impactful initiatives. Since its inception in 2010, APT activities have supported over 60,000 youth in 34 provinces promoting youth leadership, education, and a culture of peace.

“As darkness envelops a room where every lamp is shattered, so too are the hearts of countless Afghan girls, dimmed by despair and longing for the light of hope,” says an anonymous woman participant of the APT initiative.

Ajmal Ramiyar, Executive Director of APT, refuses to let their dreams die. “One day, no one will be restricted because of her gender and no child will face a future where their access to education is denied,” he says in an interview with Bibbi Abruzzini from the global civil society network Forus.

Ajmal knows firsthand what it means to be displaced by war. His lifelong fight for education began when his family fled Afghanistan in 1996 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan for the first time. Back then his sisters were barred from school.

Today, as an exiled advocate, he continues to fight for those who are left behind, and with APT he has led various initiatives, including establishing an elementary school for internally displaced children and launching the Afghan Youth Representative program to the UN.

Afghans represent one of the largest refugee populations in the world, with 2.6 million registered globally and an additional 3.5 million people internally displaced, having fled their homes in search of safety.

After more than four decades of conflict, natural disasters, deep poverty, and food insecurity, Afghanistan remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis. According to the UNHCR, the resilience of refugees, internally displaced people, and host communities is “slowly reaching its limit.”

With the sharp decline in security and opportunities since the Taliban takeover in 2021, the number of those forced to flee is expected to grow.

Defying Oppression Through Education

As of today, it has been over 1,200 days since Afghan girls were banned from attending school beyond sixth grade. While Afghan boys resumed secondary school classes on March 22, 2025, girls remain excluded with no plans announced for their return. Almost 400,000 more girls have been deprived of their right to education in 2025, bringing the total to 2.2 million according to UNICEF.

© This story was originally published by Global Voices under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC BY 3.0). No edits were made. Republished by Infinitrix News.