CNN –
Parasto Hakim was startled by a knock on the entrance gates.
She scanned her classroom for a quick head count – all the girls were already in attendance. It could only be the Taliban.
Heart pounding, she opened the door and found herself confronted by at least five members of the Afghan militant group who demanded to check whether she was breaking any rules. She was. This was a secret school set up to educate girls, even though the Taliban had banned women’s education since retaking Afghanistan two years ago.
Hakim immediately applied the school’s safety protocols. To ensure the safety of her staff and students, she had instructed them how to respond to a Taliban inspection.
“I told the girls to ‘keep quiet, keep your eyes down and don’t talk,’ even if the Taliban are speaking directly to them,” Hakim said from an undisclosed location outside Afghanistan.
“When they (the Taliban) asked them questions, the girls just looked at me and I had to answer – I was so scared.”
Hakim says the Taliban tried to bribe the girls to talk, but they remained silent. The militants then began shouting at her and tried to intimidate her and another teacher with their questions, she said. But having achieved nothing, they left.
03:45 – Source: CNN
See a secret classroom that defies Taliban orders
Hakim runs SRAK, a secret network of schools that educates around 400 girls in eight Afghan provinces with the help of 150 courageous teachers and staff. To ensure her safety, CNN is not using the 25-year-old’s real name or the names of the teachers and students we interviewed for this story.
CNN was granted access to footage in one of SRAK’s underground classrooms on the condition that the school’s location and the identities of students and staff be kept secret for their safety.
In the summer of 2021, Hakim watched in horror as the Taliban tanks rolled into Kabul while the US made its final, chaotic withdrawal from the country. This time the group promised a more progressive government than its previous fundamentalist rule between 1996 and 2001.
At a press conference shortly after taking power, the Taliban’s senior leadership emphasized that women and girls would be protected from violence and that education remained a right for everyone. Hakim didn’t believe a word of it, she says.
“They said exactly the same words as before, saying that they (Afghanistan) will create an environment consistent with Sharia and Islamic values, that girls can go back to school and women can work and go to university,” Hakim said.
“I thought to myself: They’re lying, they’re not going to change and they’re never going to allow girls to go to school again.”
The Taliban’s promises were soon broken. Girls are not allowed to go to school beyond the 6th grade and are barred from attending university.
CNN
Girls attend classes in a hidden school in Afghanistan with their faces partially covered.
Women are banned from public life in Afghanistan by the all-male government. Last December, all local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the United Nations, were ordered to ban their female employees from going to work. This year, the Taliban closed all beauty salons across the country, an industry that employed around 60,000 women.
The United Nations called the Taliban’s draconian restrictions “discriminatory and misogynistic” in a report published in June this year and said their rule could amount to “gender apartheid” and a “crime against humanity.”
CNN has reached out to the Taliban for comment on why girls and women are excluded from access to education, but has not received a response.
Hakim says she came to the conclusion that continuing to educate girls was the only way to fight back against the Taliban. Faced with history repeating itself, she turned to the example of Afghan women who defied odds more than 25 years ago when the Taliban last took control.
“I asked myself: What did the young generation do in 1996 when the Taliban were in power? How did they live?” she said.
CNN
In the hidden school in Afghanistan, girls are taught tailoring techniques using newspapers.
Inspired in part by a 1996 documentary by Christiane Amanpour called “Battle for Afghanistan,” Hakim decided to create secret schools for a new generation of Afghan girls.
That night, Hakim says, she made a series of frantic calls to her contacts, asking for help. Among them was her old friend Maryam.
“We need to at least start something for girls to come together and have their own indoor community in underground spaces where they can learn and educate themselves,” Hakim recalled Maryam saying. “I have all the resources you need; I just need you (Maryam) to expand it,” she continued.
“I worked so I could afford to buy books, notepads and everything we need for underground classes.”
Maryam, a trained educator, said when she heard about Hakim, she was ready to help and wanted to free herself from Taliban restrictions.
After the militant group banned girls from school, Maryam was trapped at home, feeling like a “zombie” with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The situation caused her to suffer from severe anxiety and depression, she said.
“I was in a situation where I wanted to scream but I couldn’t, they were some of the worst days of my life,” she said.
Maryam says as word of the school spread, more and more students enrolled, and she found that the girls were relieved to be able to attend the school because they could escape the pressures of being at home.
“Some girls refuse to stay at home on public holidays even when there is no teacher at school. They ask me to let them in,” Maryam said.
“It shows how desperate they are to escape the stress of sitting at home thinking about how their rights are being taken away.”
CNN
Girls attend classes in the hidden school in Afghanistan. Subjects covered include mathematics, science, English and tailoring.
On the day CNN visited Maryam’s hidden classroom, about 30 girls were crammed into a tiny room learning everything from English to math to science and tailoring.
“The school is like a light for me, it is like a road at the end of which I can see happiness and sunrise,” said Maryam.
“It gives me hope that one day regular schools will be reopened and every girl will be able to go back to school and women will be able to do their jobs again.”
Such hope is urgently needed in Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, rates of anxiety, depression and suicide among women in Afghanistan have risen since the group’s return to power.
One of Maryam’s students, 16-year-old Fatima, was among the many girls and women who felt depressed and anxious while confined to their homes by Taliban bans, tragically limiting their future opportunities.
“I thought I would be thrown out of society,” recalls Fatima. “It felt like you were a prisoner, like a prisoner who was only allowed to eat and drink and not do anything else.”
“If we sit at home uneducated, we cannot achieve anything,” she continued. “I didn’t want to be a burden to my family or society and I wanted to fulfill my dreams through an education.”
With the support of her family, she discovered the underground courses taught by Maryam and others and discovered her passion. She loves tailoring and dreams of becoming a famous fashion designer.
“I want to be a woman that people know,” she said. “I don’t want to stay behind a mask forever, I want to be able to show my true face.”
CNN
Fatima and Yalda, not their real names, speak to CNN at the hidden school in Afghanistan.
For Yalda, another student, resuming her education proved to be a lifeline. She had almost given up on her goal of becoming an engineer.
“It was an escape from the fear and depression I felt at home,” said the 14-year-old about returning to school, even in this limited form.
Yalda, Fatima, Maryam and countless others dream of a future without the Taliban and prepare for the day when they can emerge from the darkness.
“Even if the Taliban stay for another seven or eight years, they will leave at some point and then we can go to university and continue our education,” Yalda said.
Fawzia Koofi, a women’s rights activist and pioneering Afghan lawmaker under the previous internationally backed government, remembers seeing a similar regime change when the Taliban first came to power.
From exile, Koofi says women then faced the same restrictions on movement and education as they do today. And in 1997, like Hakim, she founded a secret school, although with some differences.
“There were always only a few girls, maybe six or seven, I only taught them English and science, not to arouse suspicion (from the Taliban),” Koofi said. “We still had to be very careful and take precautions to prevent them from discovering us.”
Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Fawzia Koofi, a former deputy speaker of the Afghan parliament who now lives in exile, is pictured in London in December 2022.
Koofi had been accepted to study medicine, but was forced to stay at home after the Taliban came to power in 1996.
“When you’re outside, the Taliban look at you like you’re half human; I’m telling you to cover your face,” she said. “It was never about what you could contribute to society or how talented you were, it was just about what you wore.”
During her subsequent political career, Koofi made history in 2005 by becoming the first woman elected to the Afghan parliament and then the country’s first female deputy speaker.
After the Taliban returned in 2021, she fled the country in the hope of returning one day.
Back at the secret school, Maryam learns that the Taliban are checking neighborhoods for illegal activity and fears they might get caught. The prospect of a visit from the militants still makes her very nervous.
“I’m scared, I’m scared every moment,” she said. “But at the same time, I move forward with the hope that tomorrow will be better than today.”
“There is a power that is stronger than fear, that is our hope for the future.”
Fatima also thinks about the future when she sets off for school every morning.
She says she’s afraid she could be arrested by the Taliban, but for her the risk is worth it.
“If they arrest me, I will tell them that I just want to be educated,” Fatima said. “I don’t want to sit at home and that’s not a crime.”