Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“Five years ago this month, as the last United States forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban grasped the reins of government and have kept a tight hold on them since. The group’s harsh interpretation of Islamic rule excludes girls and women, who make up half of Afghanistan’s estimated 50 million people, from any meaningful education …. Yet, even amid a system likened to ‘gender apartheid’, Afghanistan’s girls and women refuse to be completely cowed. They tune in to sessions on the radio – or the internet, when it works. Some, whose families can afford it, attend clandestine informal schools in neighborhood homes. Others read and reread the same textbooks that they or their siblings used in pre-Taliban years, when girls could attend secondary school and even university.” (08/17/26)