Kabul, Afghanistan.- Marwa was just months away from becoming the first woman in her family to go to university in Afghanistan, but instead she will now painfully watch her brother leave to study without her.
Under the control of the Taliban, women are now barred from going to university in Afghanistan, part of a process in which they have been losing their freedoms for the past year.
“If they had ordered the women beheaded, even that would have been better than this ban,” deplored Marwa, at her family’s home in Kabul.
“I would have preferred not to have been born if it is to have this bad luck. I regret my existence in the world. They treat us worse than animals. Animals can go anywhere on their own, but girls don’t even have the right to leave ourhouses”.
The 19-year-old passed the admission exam to study nursing starting in March in Kabul. She was excited to join her brother, Hamid, in going to campus every day.
But their futures have been separated.
“I wanted my sister to achieve her goals with me, to be successful and get ahead,” said Hamid, 20, a business administration student in Kabul.
“Despite numerous problems, he studied until the twelfth year, but what can we say now?”
crushed dreams
The ban established by the Taliban government that took power in August 2021 generated international condemnation, even from Muslim countries that considered it contrary to Islam.
To justify the exclusion, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, the Taliban Minister of Higher Education, argued that the women were ignoring the strict dress code and the requirement to accompany a male relative to university.
But the reality, according to some Taliban leaders, is that the hardline clerics who advise the movement’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, remain skeptical of modern education for women.
The girls had already been banned from high school in most of the country and were removed from their government jobs, being relegated to the home, where they receive a fraction of their salary.
They also cannot move without the company of a male relative, and must cover up in public. Women are prohibited from going to parks, fairs, gyms and public baths.
Marwa and Hamid come from a poor family, but their parents supported their desire for higher education.
With dreams of being a midwife, Marwa planned to move to remote areas of Afghanistan where women lack health services.
“I wanted to care for women in faraway places so that we would never have to see a mother die in childbirth,” she said.
But now he must stay at home and teach his six younger siblings, while his father works as a vegetable vendor.
repeated history
Minister Nadeem insists that the students behaved in ways that insult Islamic principles and Afghan culture.
“They dressed as if they were going to a wedding. Those girls who were going to the university did not follow the instructions on the hijab either,” she claimed in an interview with state television.
But Hamid firmly rejected that justification.
“When the universities opened under the Taliban (…) they could not enter without a mask and a hijab. How can they say that they were not wearing a hijab?” she questioned.
After the Taliban came to power, universities had to adopt new rules, including gender-segregated classrooms and entrances, and women could only receive classes from other women or old men.
Marwa’s mother, with her baby in her arms, said she felt that history was repeating itself.
Two decades ago he had to abandon his studies in the first Taliban government, from 1996 to 2001.
“I am happy that my son will be able to achieve his goals, but I am also sad that my daughter cannot do the same,” said Zainab, 40.
“If my daughter doesn’t reach her goals, she will have a miserable future like mine.”
