Activists secretly educating Afghan children amid Taliban crackdown

To discuss how the Taliban regime has impacted education, Amna Nawaz spoke with Afghan education activist Pashtana Durrani. She is the founder of Learn Afghanistan, a grassroots group working to expand education access there. Durrani is currently a visiting fellow at Wellesley College’s Centers for Women.
Amna Nawaz:
Joining me now is Afghan education activist Pashtana Durrani. She’s the founder of LEARN Afghanistan. That’s a grassroots group working to expand education access there. She’s currently a visiting fellow at Wellesley College’s Centers for Women.
Pashtana, welcome back. It’s good to see you.
Pashtana Durrani, Executive Director, LEARN Afghanistan:
Thank you for having me.
Amna Nawaz:
So, you, of course, had to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban reclaimed power, but you’re still regularly in contact with many women and girls there.
You heard what these women had to say about their lives today. What else do you hear from women and girls on the ground?
Pashtana Durrani:
I think the one thing I really want to highlight is the fact that women and young girls still want to go to school. They still want to work,. They still want to breathe the fresh air and go to parks and enjoy going to salons and stuff.
But the only thing that you hear from them is how supplicating it is, how it’s an open-air prison, and how they are not allowed to do anything but breathe.
Amna Nawaz:
You are — somehow, you found a way to remarkably continue to run your schools in secret in Afghanistan, not on the scale you could when you lived there, when the Taliban weren’t in power.
But what are you able to do there today? How is that running?
Pashtana Durrani:
So, right now, we have five schools in five different provinces of Afghanistan, in Kandahar, Helmand, Bamyan, Daykundi, and Herat. We’re hoping to expand to other provinces. And we’re in the midst of it.
We have around 661 students since last we spoke. But the sad reality is that, last week, we had to close down our Kandahar school, and we had to switch to online because of the current surveillance and because of the intelligence reports and how they are being surveilled. So we find ways to work, and we continue to do so.
But it is not an easy job. Running a school in Afghanistan right now is the toughest thing to do.
Amna Nawaz:
The longer they’re in power, it feels like the more restrictive the Taliban get with women and girls in particular. So what does that mean for the future of your schools?
Pashtana Durrani:
I think two things. The first is that Afghan women, given that we are very resourceful, we have to be more innovative in ways we approach everything in Afghanistan, education, health care, human rights, women rights, mental health spaces.
Afghanistan is right now the highest — the country that has the highest suicide rates for women. So it’s all of that all together. But then at the same time, when we look at it to other countries, do we really need to fight for education, instead of just being able to go to school or teach in a school or just go to work, just like other Muslim countries are allowing their own women to do that?
So it’s two things. But then, at the same time, I’m also thinking the Taliban are not clever enough. They’re coming up with the weird ways to impose their power. I mean, tell me one single woman who has been (INAUDIBLE) in the past 20 years or in the past three years.
Tell me about women who have been loud about any of the things. So I also find it very funny when they come up with these dictates. I’m like, they really need to be innovative with these things, but they’re not. So it’s restricting. It’s going to get more restricting, but they’re running out of things to ban anymore.
Amna Nawaz:
Well, what about when it comes to international pressure or U.S. pressure? Does anyone that you talk to there on the ground or do you yourself think that that kind of public pressure that we haven’t really seen, especially from the U.S., could get the Taliban to reverse course in any way?
Pashtana Durrani:
I think right now the U.S. has found, like, one chief watchman for Afghanistan. As long as it doesn’t do anything outside of Afghanistan, whatever they do that uses anything, it’s OK for them.
And I think that has been the attitude towards Afghanistan so far for the past three years. And that’s going to continue, because the U.N. literally brought them into Qatar and talked to them without even recognizing and bringing in Afghan women. That has happened in the past three years and even before that in Qatar.
They have offices all over. They are being recognized in all these countries. So I think the U.S. is complacent in many ways. Like, they don’t want to even — like, they are turning a blind eye. Every time an ambassador is accepted in other countries, the U.S. doesn’t say anything or do anything.
I don’t think their engagement will bring any changes either.
Amna Nawaz:
You know, when the Taliban came back to power and they threatened you, we should point out, which is why you were forced to leave — and I know you were reluctant at the time. We have spoken before and since.
But when you look at what has happened under the Taliban rule in the last three years, do you ever think about what it would have meant if you had stayed, what would have happened?
Pashtana Durrani:
I — this morning, there was a — one of my friends posted this field, and it said that imagine another time where we didn’t leave home, and it was all beautiful sceneries of Afghanistan and the actual national flag of Afghanistan.
And I thought to myself, I was like, imagine if we all had stayed, right, but the Taliban were not in power. Afghanistan might have been a different place. But then, at the same time, if we all have stayed, would we have made out? Would we have been doing all the things that we do right now?
Would I be running schools, or would I be literally begging for documentation in the neighboring countries? Would I even be alive? Like, all of those things.
So, it’s hard to imagine, but it definitely takes a toll on you.
Amna Nawaz:
That is Pashtana Durrani, founder of LEARN Afghanistan, currently at Wellesley College’s Centers for Women.
Pashtana, good to speak with you. Thank you.
Pashtana Durrani:
Thank you.