In former Taliban stronghold, locals resist educating women

PANJWAI, Afghanistan -- With only weeks to go before the start of a new term, just 9 percent of school-age girls in southern Afghanistan have registered for classes, compared with 45 percent in the capital Kabul, an education official said Tuesday.

Convincing parents of the need to educate their daughters is a challenge all over Afghanistan. However, it's especially difficult in the south, the home of the traditionalist Pashtun community and former stronghold of the Taliban.

"This is old Taliban territory," said Mohammed Dawood Barak, an Education Ministry official in charge of the country's southern provinces. "So it's going to take a while for things to change."

Barak said authorities had not finished compiling statistics on the number of boys enrolled, but Afghan families are generally more eager to educate sons than daughters.

Officials and educators said enrollment of girls has been poor despite door-to-door campaigns and radio announcements in some areas urging parents to sign their children up for classes, which start on staggered dates next month.

Culture to blame

They blame a culture where women lack any real power, and which views education as the province of men.

Bibi Jan, a mother of nine children and herself illiterate, said her husband won't allow their four daughters to go to school because he thinks only boys should be educated.

"When I was a kid I thought maybe I would be allowed to go to school, but the men in my family didn't give me permission," said Jan, in her 30s and dressed head-to-toe in a powder-blue burqa. "I want my girls to get an education, but my husband won't allow it. That's how things are here."

Many rural and small-town Afghans have never accepted education of women. During the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, many Afghans believed the Russians intended to corrupt their women. Women were kept at home, and girls forbidden from attending schools.

Educators say similar suspicions undermine today's back-to-school campaign.

"In May, people pasted leaflets on the school that said the infidels were trying to corrupt the youth of Afghanistan and that parents should resist sending their children to school," said Mohammed Wali, headmaster for the Shamsudin Kakar girls' school in Panjwai, a town about an hour west of Kandahar, the south's largest city.

Not a single girl has registered for classes at the school, he said.

"We need female teachers but they are afraid to come," said Wali.

Mohibullah Zawuddin, a 30-year-old shop owner in Panjwai, displays the type of stubborn beliefs educators are up against.

"I will never allow my girls to go to school," said Zawuddin, who has two daughters, 7 and 8. "Islam says women should not be allowed outside. The boys need education so they can work or serve the country but the girls will be married soon. They don't need it."

Last month, UNICEF released its own statistics showing that of the 159,159 students who had registered for primary and secondary schools in the country's five southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Uruzgan and Nimroz, only 16,604 were girls.

Change is possible

Still, Douglas Higgins, the head of UNICEF's Kandahar office, said many have embraced change in the south and educating women is possible.

UNICEF resumed full operations in Kandahar this year, after the Taliban expelled its local head in 1997 because of its gender policies. The agency is providing schools with more than a half million books and hundreds of tents to handle the increase in students, many of them returning refugees.

The association teaches first- to third-grade levels of reading and math to girls and women whose ages range from 9 to 79.

"I had to wait until my husband died before I was able to come to school," said Bibi Zara, 79, her withered hands clasping a first-grade-level textbook.