In Taliban’s Afghanistan, defiance looks like girls sitting with pencil and paper, learning to do so. Since the extremist group’s decree a year ago that banned girls aged 12 to 17 in most government schools, increasing numbers have enrolled themselves in informal schools spread across the country.
CBS News correspondent Imtaz Tayyab visits the one set up by Dr. Zainab Mohammadi. She spends it entirely out of her own pocket, which she believes is difficult, but she told CBS News she feels it is her “responsibility” and has no intention of stopping.
Although the Taliban formally ban the education of teenage girls, Mohammadi says the country’s rulers largely turn a blind eye to informal schools like hers – unless strict rules are followed.
Girls are required to dress completely in black, and men cannot come to school.
For now, adhering to those guidelines means that Mohammadi students are able to continue taking classes in everything from religious studies to crochet. But it is the English class that they look forward to the most.
Tyeb asked the class if he believed it was important for girls to receive an education.
“Yes!” The answer was strong.
But as strongly as the girls feel about being educated, it is not easy for them to get into Mohammadi’s school.
“I feel bad,” one student told Tayeb about the mandatory dress code and the need to hide her ambition to get an education.
Tyeb asked her if she believed her life would ever be normal again.
“No, no,” she replied.
Looks like Huda Siddiqui knows everything very well. Tayeb met her last year, just months after the Taliban announced a ban on girls’ education.
A year later, he is still out of school.
“It was terrible for me to sit at home,” she told CBS News. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”
Asked what she wants the world to know about the plight of thousands of Afghan girls like her who want an education but don’t have access to a school like Mohammadi, Siddiqui didn’t hesitate.
“They should force the Taliban government to reopen schools for girls,” she said. “I don’t think any country will recognize them until they reopen these schools.”
Tayeb asked Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Kahr Balkhi if the group understood why every other country in the world had refused to give the Taliban the formal recognition it wanted.
“The issue is being weaponized,” he said of girls’ education. “This is an internal matter of Afghanistan, and the policy is very clear when it comes to education, that is, education for all Afghan students and citizens.”
He insisted that the ban on older girls from receiving education was only a “temporary suspension”.
But high school-age girls have now been excluded from formal schooling for a year since the Taliban took power in the country, and many are certain that is not going to change.