22 Time November 8/November 15, 2021
On The day The Taliban capTured Kabul, Farah
was at her university. A young man burst in to their class-
room, disrupting a financial-management class. “He
said, ‘They are coming here. Run!’ ” says Farah, 24, who
asked to be identified by a pseudonym. Shaking with
fear, she says, “we just stood and started collecting all our
notebooks.”
In the two months since Afghanistan’s government col-
lapsed on Aug. 15, thousands of Afghan girls and women
like Farah have been shut out of their high schools and
universities, their studies over and futures in flux.
Before August, about half the 20,000 or so students at
Kabul University, the country’s oldest university, were fe-
male. Women’s education was perhaps the strongest sign
of change and hope for the new Afghanistan.
Yet despite Taliban assurances during negotiations
with the U.S. that all Afghans would have the right to
education, the new government has barred them from
setting foot on campuses—a situation that shows no signs
of ending, despite pressure from Western governments.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid recently said
they would be allowed to resume their studies when there
is “an environment where female students are protected.”
That has strong echoes of the Taliban banning girls’
education during their rule over Afghanistan between
1996 and 2001.
However, a lifeline has emerged for these women: on-
line studies. Hundreds of female students have rushed in
recent weeks to register for a remote-learning program
Studying in secret online
By Vivienne Walt
launched by a California-based non-
profit online university, entering a new
program that begins Nov. 1 geared spe-
cifically at women banished from their
education by the Taliban.
Shai Reshef, founder and president
of University of the People (UoPeople),
which offers U.S.-accredited degrees to
about 100,000 students worldwide, has
offered 1,000 scholarships to Afghan
women, funded by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, Clinton Foundation,
Ford Foundation and others.
Others are attempting to offer
opportunities for Afghan women to
study abroad. The U.N. Development
Programme offers several scholarships
in nearby Central Asian countries, for
example, all funded by the E.U.
But UoPeople appears to be the sole
organization offering large numbers
of full scholarships for Afghan women
to earn degrees online, without leav-
ing their homes. About 2,000 applied,
and Reshef says he has raised funds to
meet the demand. “With us, they can
study at home,” he says, “and no one
needs to know.”TIME spoke to five women who
had been accepted, all of whom are ei-
ther in hiding or keeping their studies
secret. Nasrin, 21, another Kabul Uni-
versity student, says her new schol-
arship has rescued her from sinking
into despair. Despite the high Inter-
net costs in Afghanistan—and patchy
connectivity and frequent electricity
blackouts—she says she is determined
to throw herself into studying to keep
herself emotionally stable. Ahead of
her UoPeople course, Nasrin has also
registered for online English classes
offered by King’s College London, as
well as a six-week psychology course
at the University of Cape Town in
South Africa.
Farah, who fled her financial-
management class the day the Taliban
seized Kabul, now plans to get a busi-
ness degree from UoPeople. With her
husband out of work, she says the cou-
ple will struggle to pay higher Internet
charges; she intends to study at night,
after putting her daughter to bed. “I
have to go through with my dream,” she
says. “I was planning for my future. I
want to achieve that.” □TheBrief World
VICTOR J. BLUE—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
△
Taliban members
disperse a rally in
support of women’s
education in Kabul
on Sept. 30