Afghanistan’s Only All-Girls Boarding School Fears for the Return of the Taliban

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The New Yorker

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🗓️ 19 July 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Since the U.S. withdrawal began, Taliban forces have re-captured more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s districts. Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the co-founder of the country’s only all-girls boarding school, and she is anxiously waiting to see if the Taliban—which brutally opposes the education of girls and women—will make inroads in Kabul. At SOLA, the School of Leadership Afghanistan, students are free from the threats and violence that is commonly suffered in villages, and the expectations of housework that interfere with studying. Basij-Rasikh told the staff writer Sue Halpern how she was educated secretly, during the Taliban’s rule, and about her belief that Kabul will not fall to the group’s resurgence. “I was speaking with a young woman and she said, ‘Yes, sure, the Taliban will kill more of us. The Taliban will kill a lot more of us. But they will never, ever rule over us.’ ”

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1:11.7	I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, New Yorker's staff writer, Sue Halpern, talks with Shabana Basij Rassik, the founder of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, the country's only girls boarding school, they'll discuss what the withdrawal of
1:29.0	U.S. troops from the country will mean for Afghan women.
1:35.1	We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-built, and it's the right and the responsibility of Afghan
1:43.0	people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.
1:48.6	After nearly 20 years, American troops will be out of Afghanistan by September.
1:53.8	That's according to President Biden.
1:55.8	Officials at the Pentagon say that day may come even sooner than that.
1:59.8	But in any case, the end of the Forever War
2:01.9	could well have terrible consequences, the return to power of the Taliban. Since April, when the
2:09.2	Palat began, the Taliban has captured more than a quarter of Afghanistan's districts. And for
	...

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