All smiles, Afghan girls go back to school

Illiteracy is rampant. Another UNICEF survey, conducted in 1997, found that only 35 percent of men and 10 percent of women in urban areas could read "easily or with difficulty." In rural areas, these rates drop to 26 percent for men and 3 percent for women.

For Maezuddin, the gray-bearded principal of Girls' School No. 2, the day the Taliban announced on radio that all girls' schools would be closed was a particularly tough one. "I was just asking the parents to make arrangements in their homes so their children can get educated," he says, thumbing his smooth, reddish prayer beads. Now, he says, "It will be difficult for them to start from the same status they were in before."

But Maezuddin (like most Afghans, he uses only one name) says he has no trouble finding teachers willing to work, even without salaries, since most take second jobs selling vegetables in the market. "Right now, under the present government, we are earning nothing," he says. "We just do this to serve the nation, to serve the soil, so the nation can be relieved of its barbarism."

In her fourth-grade classroom, Miss Nooriya is teaching more than 30 girls the most basic of lessons - the rules of the classroom, raising their hands before speaking, and sitting quietly on cotton rugs stretched out over an inch-deep deposit of sand.

"I want to go to school all the way to 12th grade, and I want to go to university," says 12-year-old Yasmin, whose father was a college-educated agricultural expert for the provincial government. But Yasmin says she probably won't be the first woman in her family to attend college. "I have an older sister in 11th grade, and she might be the first to go to college."

Many of the girls here say they have mixed emotions about the days of the Taliban. While its leaders stopped the education of girls and forbade women from working outside the home, among other restrictions, the Taliban had little impact on what most women did inside their homes, including listening to music cassettes and watching videos - both officially banned activities.

Most important, these girls say, the Taliban restored law and order after the 1992-'96 civil war and helped make the streets safe enough for women to visit the market without fear of rape or harassment.

Miriam, a 17-year-old who covers all but one eye with her brown scarf in front of a Western reporter, says she regrets that during Taliban rule, most of her friends fell behind in their schooling. But, she says, the warlords who now control the region around Jalalabad - and much of the rest of the country - pose a far worse danger. They are the same ones whose civil war killed tens of thousands of Afghans and left much of the country in ruins.

"With the present government, there are two commanders who are in charge of the city, and they are enemies of each other, and it is impossible for a small city to have two kings," Miriam says. "We are afraid of the future, because these men have been tested once already, before the Taliban came. If they can come to a peaceful solution between them, then we can have a peaceful life."

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