The walls are made of thick mud and the only light comes from the sun that falls through the narrow window onto the carpet where Sumaya and her three friends are sitting.
The one-room house, like many others, is near the Afghan capital Kabul, but for 15-year-old Sumaya it is “special, a chance to learn, a chance for a future”.
The building is one of Afghanistan’s secret underground schools for teenage girls who are defying the Taliban’s ban on education.
Three times a week, Sumaya and her friends travel to the house with their faces and bodies covered to study with an aunt who is a teacher.
All travel slightly different routes and when stopped say they are visiting friends.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan a year ago and have barred young girls from attending secondary school. Pictured: Taliban militants take control of the Afghan Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 15, 2021
They rarely carry stationery or pens with them, knowing that if caught, not only do they face the likelihood of punishment, but so do their families.
“The Taliban want girls to be prisoners in their homes, but I want to learn, I want a future where I can use my brain and work,” Sumaya said.
The Taliban had promised that the ban on secondary school attendance would be temporary, but with their leadership divided over a planned reopening in March, the government reversed that decision.
A 14-year-old girl revealed that her friend was so devastated by the initial ban that she committed suicide and threw herself from her family’s second floor apartment.
She hadn’t been able to face the fact that her “dreams were over”.
More than half the country is in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and the UN warns that 97 percent of the population is on the brink of poverty. Pictured: A young child is treated for malnutrition in Kabul August 13
The repressive ban is just one of the consequences of the unopposed Taliban invasion of Kabul exactly a year ago.
But it was 12 months of turbulence in a country where Western allies were pouring blood and billions into rebuilding before it left in panic and chaos last August.
Few of management’s promises of change have been fulfilled. Tens of thousands of Afghans have fled and many more are hoping to leave.
Amid the worst drought in 37 years and with half the population dependent on food aid, the Taliban have told people to “trust in God for food, not the government”.
More than half the country is in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and the UN warns that 97 percent of the population is on the brink of poverty.
In the face of a lack of money, parents are faced with decisions no family should make – from taking children out of school so they can work to trading young daughters for money.
Child and forced marriages are said to be “on the rise”. One girl, five-year-old Farhana (pictured), was promised as a child bride because of unpaid debts
According to aid organizations, women and girls are undoubtedly the victims.
Child and forced marriages are said to be “on the rise”. A girl, five-year-old Farhana, was promised as a child bride because of unpaid debts.
…while babies die of starvation
Seven-month-old Samera’s dark, saucer-like eyes stare out while a nurse gently rocks her head and cleanses her desperately weak body.
She is one of the innocent victims of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and is among many suffering from the effects of severe acute malnutrition, one of the leading killers of children under the age of five.
Her 12-year-old brother Temor is worried and feels helpless.
“I would like some bread and milk for my little sister,” he says. “My mother and father are unemployed and we have nothing to eat or drink. Sometimes we can find bread and sometimes not.”
Temor lives with his mother Sonia, 36, two brothers and Samera in a one-room house in a remote community in northern Afghanistan. Samera’s father went to Iran to look for work, but they didn’t get any money.
Samera weighs just 8 pounds and her lifeline has been the mobile health center – one of 66 run by Save the Children in the country – where she is fed a special peanut-based paste that provides her with essential vitamins.
Her father Karim, once a successful businessman, was faced with an agonizing decision after a moneylender he had used showed up at his door demanding repayment.
Knowing that repayment was impossible, Karim had to agree to give Farhana as a child bride if he didn’t repay the debt within six months.
He said, “I had to agree or risk putting everyone in my family at risk.”
Earlier this year, a decree by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice said women should wear a burqa or cover their face in public and that it would be “best” for them not to leave the house at all.
Another decree banned women from long-distance road and air travel unless accompanied by a male relative.
Agnes Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, said: “These policies create a system of oppression that discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives.”
Shaharzad Akbar, now in exile but once head of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, said: “When I talk to women and girls in Afghanistan, they say they feel caged, like animals in a zoo.”
When women tried to protest against the Taliban, the approach was sometimes brutal.
Amnesty International spoke to a protester who was detained for several days.
She said, “Taliban guards kept showing me pictures of my family. They kept repeating, “We can kill them and you won’t be able to do anything.”
Save the Children’s Chris Nyamandi warned: “Girls are bearing the brunt. They suffer from isolation and emotional stress and stay at home while the boys go to school.
“This is a humanitarian crisis, but also a children’s rights disaster.”