His first breakthrough came when an
influential headmaster from a highly
regarded community-run high school in
Kabul sent his daughter to AUW; then
later he discovered that mobile telephone
companies in Afghanistan kept separate
records for female and male customers.
“We said, we are going to blast these female
cellphone subscribers with messages,
saying, if you know of a young woman who
has courage, who is outraged at injustice
and who is compassionate and is eager to
learn, to get to university, there is a place
looking for her,” he says.
Sepehra was one of those people. Though
she came from a modest background, her
mother encouraged her to study. A cousin
told her about AUW, advising her to apply
otherwise she might never escape rural
Afghanistan and “will have to get married
or stay your whole life inside the home”. In
2019 she was among more than 150 Afghans
who made the journey to the campus in
Chittagong. She went to study economics,
which she hoped to put to good use
developing Afghanistan’s stunted
manufacturing base on her return.
“Getting the scholarship made such
a huge difference in my life,” she says. “It
opened my eyes. All these people with
different perspectives and mindsets, I had
never experienced anything like it. My
freedom there compared with back in
Afghanistan is like night and day. Because
freedom to me means having the chance
to know yourself and find out what you
are capable of.”
Another of the recruits was Diana Ayubi,
who had been born in 1998 and named
after Princess Diana, who had died the year
before. As an infant she had moved with
her parents to Pakistan when the Taliban
began shutting down girls’ schools after
seizing control in 1996. In 2015 they
decided to return home so that Diana could
qualify for university, which she would not
be allowed to attend for free as a refugee
in Pakistan. Then a friend told her about
AUW and she applied; she was thrilled
by the freedoms she found there. While
studying public health, she joined clubs for
film, culture and photography, and took
lessons in badminton, discovering she had
a talent for the sport.
The students’ new horizons, however,
were abruptly curtailed in 2020 by the
coronavirus pandemic. As Bangladesh
imposed a nationwide curfew and
international borders closed, Ahmad took
the decision that it was safer for the young
Afghans to return home to pursue their
studies remotely. All but a handful left.
THE TALIBAN RETURN
As Sepehra and Diana returned home, the
Taliban were gaining control of the country
once again. They had been gathering
strength in Afghanistan’s rural south for
years, bringing their iron rule to villages,
but were now making disturbing headway
in the north as well. On February 29, 2020,
President Trump’s administration had
signed a peace agreement in Doha under
which the Taliban agreed not to attack
American troops in return for a US promise
to withdraw its forces from the country
the following year.
It was meant to initiate a peaceful
transition, but as soon the deal was signed
the Taliban turned their guns on the Afghan
security forces and civilians and began
sweeping through the countryside. Those
students who returned home to rural
provinces found themselves cut off from the
freedoms they had enjoyed in Chittagong.
Those in Kabul were still able to keep in
touch and study together, at least for a while.
“A really close friend had the same
major as me and we would meet up to study
and spend seven or eight hours together,
trying to find a coffee shop or restaurant to
get a decent internet connection,” Diana
says. “Sometimes we were studying and
sometimes we were just hanging out and
talking. That was one of the best things
about AUW for me — the bond of
sisterhood. We all support one another.”
Sepehra also stayed in Kabul, living with
her uncle and working for a charity to help
support the rest of her family. For the two
young women the Taliban’s advance was at
first a distant, slightly unreal drumbeat.President Biden’s announcement, in April
2021, that American troops really would be
gone by September came as a jolt. “But
even then we didn’t really expect that
Afghanistan would fall again,” Diana recalls.
Back in Chittagong, Ahmad was growing
more concerned by daily reports of the
Taliban’s advances and tales of their
brutality. Girls were being barred from
attending school and carried off by fighters
to serve as wives. By the end of June he
decided he had no choice but to bring the
students back to Bangladesh. “Our students
were not afraid of Covid but they were
rightly afraid of the Taliban,” he says.
On July 4 the Americans abandoned
Bagram, their main airbase in Afghanistan,
disappearing overnight. The Taliban
stepped up their advance across the north.
Ahmad set about making plans for the
students to leave, but he had another
concern too: the AUW alumni who had
already graduated and were now working in
Afghanistan. They had no course to return
to at the university. The solution: in just
three weeks, with help from Cherie Blair
and other international allies, AUW devised
a master’s degree in education to which
graduates could enlist.
As Ahmad struggled to arrange visas for
the students and prepared to fly into Kabul
to help them get out, the situation in the
country was growing worse. On August 14
the Taliban took the northern city of
Mazar-i-Sharif, the last government
stronghold outside the capital. Ahmad
was due to fly out the next day, but that
afternoon he received a text from Turkish
Airlines: his flight had been cancelled.“DON’T GO OUTSIDE”
The next morning Ahmad held a virtual
meeting with the students in Kabul and
told them he was organising a charter flight
to come and get them. “He said to be ready
within 24 hours,” Diana says. “He told us,
‘You can carry only 10 kilograms of luggage,
take all your important documents and be
ready at all times. We will only be able to let
you know three hours before the flight.’”
Time, though, was already running out.
About an hour after the meeting the
students received a voice message from one
of their group in the city centre. “She was
running so fast and she was saying, ‘Please
don’t go outside, go to your homes because
Taliban have come.’ The other girls said,
‘OK, stop, don’t spread these rumours.’ And
she said, ‘I’m sorry if I upset you but this is
the truth. The Taliban are here.’ ”
Faster than anyone had expected, the
Taliban had advanced on the capital“Some of the girls’ families were calling them,
saying, ‘Come home.’ Others were saying, ‘Don’t
— it’s more risky than being at the airport’”
Diana, left, and another student wait on one
of seven buses to gain entry to Kabul airportThe Sunday Times Magazine • 21