Kabul, Afghanistan CNN —
The 21-year-old student had been studying hard for weeks and preparing for the final exams of her first year of study. She was almost done, with only two exams left, when she heard the news: the Taliban government suspended university education for all female students in Afghanistan.
“I didn’t stop and kept studying for the exam,” she told CNN on Wednesday. “I went to uni in the morning anyway.”
But it was no use. When she arrived, she found armed Taliban guards at the gates of her campus in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and turned away any student who tried to enter.
“It was a horrific scene,” she said. “Most of the girls, myself included, were crying and begging them to let us in… If you lose all your rights and can’t do anything about it, how would you feel?”
CNN is not naming the student for security reasons.
The Taliban’s decision on Tuesday was just the latest step in their brutal crackdown on Afghan women’s freedoms after they took over the country in August 2021.
Although the insurgent group has repeatedly claimed that it is protecting the rights of girls and women, in reality it has done the opposite, taking away the hard-won freedoms it has fought tirelessly to secure over the past two decades.
Some of the most noticeable restrictions have been on education, with girls barred from returning to secondary schools in March. The move devastated many students and their families, who told CNN their shattered dreams of becoming doctors, teachers or engineers.
For the student from Kabul, the loss of her education came as an even greater shock than the bombings and violence she had previously experienced.
“I always thought that by educating ourselves, we could overcome our heartache and fear,” she said. “But this (time) is different. It’s just unacceptable and unbelievable.”
The news was met with widespread condemnation and dismay, and many world leaders – and prominent Afghan figures – called on the Taliban to reverse their decision.
In a statement on Twitter, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani – who fled Kabul when the Taliban took power – labeled the group as illegitimate rulers holding “the entire population hostage”.
“The current problem of women’s education and work in the country is very serious, sad and the most blatant and cruel example of gender apartheid in the 21st century,” Ghani wrote. “I’ve said it again and again, if a girl can read and write, she will change five future generations, and if a girl remains illiterate, she will cause the destruction of five future generations.”
He praised those in Afghanistan who protested the Taliban’s decision, calling them “pioneers”.
Another former Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, also expressed “deep regret” at the suspension. The “development, population and self-sufficiency of the country depend on the education and training of every child, girl and boy of this country,” he wrote.
Other foreign officials and leaders made similar statements, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, US State Department spokesman Ned Price and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karen Decker.
The foreign ministries of France, Germany, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia also criticized the decision.
“Preventing half the population from making meaningful contributions to society and the economy will have a devastating impact across the country,” the UN mission in Afghanistan said in a statement.
“Education is a basic human right,” she added. “The exclusion of women and girls from secondary and higher education not only denies them that right, but denies Afghan society as a whole to benefit from the contributions women and girls have to make. It denies all of Afghanistan a future.”
Female students in Afghanistan say their future is now up in the air, with no clarity about what will become of their education.
“I still hope that things will return to normal, but I don’t know how long it will take,” said the student from Kabul. “Now a lot of girls, including me, are just thinking about what’s next, what we can do to get out of this situation.”
“I’m not stopping,” she added, saying she would consider “going somewhere else” if Afghanistan continued to ban female students.
Another 21-year-old, Maryam, is well aware of the dangers of being educated as a woman. As a high school student, she had been close to an attack on Kabul University a few years earlier and recalls being evacuated “while bullets were flying over our heads.”
Then, in September, she narrowly survived a suicide attack on Kabul’s Kaaj Education Center that killed at least 25 people, most of whom are believed to be young women. The attack sparked public outrage and horror, and dozens of women subsequently took to the streets of Kabul to protest.
Maryam, who is being identified by name for her safety, missed the blast by seconds. As she ran back to her classroom, they encountered the scattered bodies of her friends.
Each encounter with death cemented her resolve to pursue not only her own ambitions — but also the “dreams of all my best friends who died before my eyes,” she said.
Despite being accepted into an undergraduate program weeks after the September bombing, she decided to postpone her university plans for a year and instead return to rebuild the devastated education center from scratch. She wants to encourage other girls to continue their education, she said.
Now those dreams have been shattered by Tuesday’s announcement.
“I’m just lost. I don’t know what to do and what to say,” she told CNN. “Since last night I’ve been imagining each of my friends who lost their lives in the Kaaj attack. What was her sacrifice for?”
“We need education; we sacrificed a lot for it. It is our only hope for a better future.”