All smiles, Afghan girls go back to school

Five years of shutdown and neglect have taken their toll on Jalalabad's Girls' School No. 2. There are no books to read, no lesson plans to teach from, no furniture to sit on, and no funds to pay for materials or teacher salaries.

But what this school lacks in resources, it makes up with enthusiasm. Small wonder. This is the first chance these girls have to resume their educations since the Taliban, the extreme Islamist militia that controlled the country from 1996 until being ousted more than three weeks ago, shut down all girls' schools by religious decree.

"I cannot express my happiness to you," says Lida, a 15-year-old in a white scarf who is preparing to pick up where she left off, in fifth grade. "I can remember the day the Taliban came, and we went home in great sadness. But we are quite happy to return to school."

Many girls kept up with their studies at home, they say, taught by parents or older siblings. And while most still cover their heads with veils - some even wear the all-covering, blue-tinted burqas once required by the Taliban - these girls say they intend to take full part in Afghan life. "In Afghan society, it is not an unusual thing for girls to go to college," Lida says.

On this day, more than 500 girls have shown up for registration at Jalalabad's Girls' School No. 2.

They are among some 3,500 girls who have registered for classes in Nangarhar Province, where Jalalabad is located, Abdul Ghani Hidayat, director of education for the post-Taliban provincial government, told the Associated Press last week. Since Taliban forces withdrew on Nov. 7, Mr. Hidayat said the province has reopened more than 280 schools for 150,000 returning students.

After 23 years of war, the past five under the Taliban's restrictive interpretation of Islamic law, freedom is coming quietly to the young women in this ultraconservative patch of eastern Afghanistan. Nowhere is that freedom more evident than in Jalalabad's dusty schools, where the brilliant and the fortunate are now attempting to make up for lost time.

But while the new post-Taliban government - composed of tribal elders and warlords - is embracing an ethos of tolerance that the Taliban lacked, they will have their work cut out for them.

In a city of 250,000, where half the population is under the age of 20, just a few thousand, or less than 10 percent of school-aged children, have been able to find the resources to return to school, challenge their minds, and rebuild their futures.

Of course, Afghanistan, a desperately poor and largely rural country of 26 million citizens, has long had difficulty educating its masses. During the past decade, where civil war followed 10 years of rebellion against Soviet invasion, this challenge became nearly insurmountable.

According to a 2000 survey by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), taken during Taliban rule, 8 of every 20 boys and 19 out of 20 girls were unable to attend school, even though education officially has been free and compulsory since 1935.

Page: 1 | 2