In Kabul schools, fear of Taliban return

Glory and service to country seem to drive the students taking private English lessons in one of the many foreign language schools that have opened here since the Taliban fell. They aspire to be doctors, engineers, and journalists – to elevate themselves above the decrepitude and insecurity they see all around them.

"I want to be an astronaut!" announces 14-year-old Arsalan. So does his little brother. Their friend, Seeyar, is determined to be president.

"He's on the land," says Arsalan. "We'll go to the stars!"

But those youthful dreams – expressed boisterously by these boys and more shyly inside a classroom of a dozen male and female students in their late teens – give way to details of fear about a Taliban resurgence and heartfelt concern about the US intent regarding the Muslim world.

Tamana's family returned to Kabul from Pakistan after US-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. "When I came, everything was destroyed, and people were destroyed," recalls Tamana, who wants to become a television journalist. "People couldn't say their opinion. They were fighting their brothers."

A pervasive fear is that the string of Taliban suicide attacks, and fighting between NATO and US forces in south and east Afghanistan, is a prelude to the Islamist militia again regaining control.

This recently opened school – along with many other language and computer schools in the capital – would be closed; women would be forced again to wear burqas.

"My family has decided they should remain in Afghanistan for the time being, because we can get an education," says Espozhmai, her hands covered in traditional henna, who was secretly home-schooled by her mother during the Taliban era. "We will decide what to do, if the Taliban takes Kabul."

Afsoon's family is also staying. "We don't want to live like refugees again," she says of the 11 years her family lived in Isfahan, Iran.

"We decided to stay, because my mother said: 'Afghanistan needs people like us to rebuild. If we don't reconstruct it, who will?' " Afsoon recalls of the dinner table conversation.

"I want to fight, to save my country," vows Fareshda, whose gentle face and slipping headscarf belie her desire to take on the Taliban and their uncompromising rules. "My family is happy, because they are in their own country."

"Our problem is our people. They are uneducated. They all the time are used as a tool by someone else," says teacher Shayan. "The first time the Taliban took control of Afghanistan I stayed. But if they come again, I will leave Afghanistan. I can't stand a second time."

So what do these students say are Afghanistan's three greatest needs today?

"Security," says Fareshda.

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