Refugee schooling has been an unexpected bonus for many Afghan girls

by Michelle Brown and Veronika Martin

With her frosty blue nail polish, confident smile, and almost flawless American-accented English, 20-year-old Fahria challenges most stereotypes of Afghan women. She took a break from surfing the web at Mars Computer Center for refugee girls in the Pakistani city of Peshawar to describe her dream of returning to Afghanistan to become either a computer programmer or a doctor.

Fahria had fled three years earlier when the Taliban captured her hometown of Mazar-i-Sharif and barred girls from going to school. Her family promptly packed their belongings and moved to Pakistan so that Fahria and her sisters could continue their studies – a reason many other families gave for leaving Afghanistan.

Refugees often lose everything, but one of the ironies surrounding the exodus of millions of Afghans in the last two decades is that huge numbers of girls were able to receive an education in exile – primarily in Pakistan and Iran – they would have been denied at home. This twist of fortune could play an important and positive role in the pending reconstruction of the shattered country.

"The education opportunities are good for Afghans in Pakistan," Fahria said, and she personally has excelled. Most girls attending primary school complete only three years, but Fahria has now enrolled in a college diploma course in information technology and is also studying to become a doctor at the Afghan University in Peshawar, along with 900 other Afghan women. In her spare time she teaches English at the Iranian Council, earning some money to support her studies.

Like Fahria, 18-year-old Mahmooda and her sisters abandoned their education in the capital, Kabul when the Taliban came to power. "I was forced to stay at home and do nothing," she recalls now. "Day by day, my life became worse."

Her father had lost a leg in the army and so four years ago they also headed to Pakistan where the women could work to support the family and the girls could continue school.

Unlike Fahria, whose excellent English allows her to earn a modest salary, the shy, 18-year-old Mahmooda struggles to pay school fees of $1.20 a month. Each day she weaves carpets and embroiders shawls in a dimly lit room until two o'clock in the morning. Four hours later, she must prepare for school.

A BRIGHTER FUTURE

In some respects, this experiment in girls' education has been a remarkable success. In the last five years, the number attending UNHCR-sponsored primary schools in Pakistan increased fivefold and UNHCR community services officer Anne Siri said, "There are no girls who are reluctant to learn. They love it." In Iran, the picture has been the same, with girls making up nearly half of primary school students.

In Afghanistan itself, there is an 'educational buzz' in the air. Rebuilding from scratch, the government promised to reopen 3,500 schools for 1.5 million boys and girls as soon as possible. Classrooms which have already opened, though bare and cold, are packed. At one school in Kabul, girls sit in neat rows on pieces of cloth on the freezing concrete floor, eyes glued to the teacher. The school's principal returned to her post after teaching girls in secret during the Taliban rule.

For five years, 16-year-old Khalida and 30 other students attended one of these underground classrooms only a stone's throw from Taliban headquarters in Kabul. "We were scared to go to school, we did not carry our books and we studied in secret," Khalida recalls. Her new school is housed in a bombed-out building with a shattered roof on the edge of Kabul. "We have no chairs, no books, and the teachers have no salary," she said. "When it snows we use only those classrooms that have a roof, but learning is important. One day I want to be a doctor."

A fellow student, 17-year-old Parnyan, echoes her enthusiasm about her school's reopening: "I have been looking forward to this for more than five years. I can't explain it. I was so happy. I thought I was dreaming."

DIFFICULT TIMES

Despite these encouraging signs, there have been earlier disappointments and the prospect of future problems.

Hundreds of thousands of young people were educated in exile, but because of a shortage of international funds and other problems, several million youngsters were denied the opportunity of even a basic education. When they eventually return home these disenfranchised students will do so with few skills or opportunity to earn a living in a nation which is trying to rebuild itself from scratch and needs all the expertise it can find, including an estimated 100,000 new teachers.

There are still an estimated 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran and their decision on whether to return home will be influenced not only by economic and security conditions, but also on the availability and level of schooling.

For those who have already returned, there has been a rude awakening. After spending eight years in Pakistan, Latifa recently went back to Kabul and like many others, was apparently shocked at the state of the educational system. "In Pakistan we had many facilities," she said, "but it is different here. There are no chairs and no supplies. The teachers do not receive a salary so they often come late. I hope that I can begin to study in a school that has chairs, carpets and good teachers."

There is also the urban- rural divide, and long held assumptions that daughters in farm families do not want or need an education. That, according to Sima Samar, the interim Minister of Women's Affairs and a leader in rural development, is outdated.

"In one rural village a group of conservative elders, all ordinary men, came to me to ask if I could start a school for girls," she said. "Before, there was no school, but now they want one. They want their daughters to be educated. They see education as an opportunity."

Eighteen-year-old Mahmooda will return home soon, acknowledging that she will probably have to continue to embroider scarves to help her family survive, but she has faith in the power of education.

"Uneducated people are like blind people," she said. "When they travel to a new place, they can't even read signs and they don't know where they are. I hope that people won't feel like they are blind for much longer." B

The authors are staff members of the American humanitarian group Refugees International.

Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 126: "Women – Seeking A Better Deal" (April 2002). Download the complete issue (pdf, 1.3Mb) here