Yes60 small faces framed in a white headscarf look in the direction of the panel. Division arithmetic is on the timetable. The teacher asks what happens when you divide 20 into three parts. Fingers are pulled back. The restlessness increases, the urge to get the result runs in the limbs of the students. But the further you look, the more confused your expressions become. Girls ages six to 13 sit together in small rooms, the floors crowded together, occupying nearly every square centimeter. Smallest in the front, bigger and bigger in the back, the girls who finally want to hold on to what they’ve been denied for years.
It’s the last hour this morning in Alisha, a small mud village somewhere in the mountains of Vardak province, a few hours’ drive west. Kabul, The girls don’t have a real school building here, but a room with white walls and an old blackboard, plastic mats on the floor – and a teacher on top. A few months ago, classes for girls started for the first time in Alisha.
This is a bit contradictory, however, since Islamist came to power. Taliban In Afghanistan, the situation of many girls and women in the country has improved. While in cities schoolgirls were banned from higher classes and everything was gradually taken out of everyday life, remote areas enjoyed girls’ education and health care for the first time. Because about 60 percent of the country used to be the “white zone” for international aid organizations, no projects were possible due to security reasons. And the state had long since retreated from areas where the Taliban had gained the upper hand.
The bumpy dirt track leads up to Alisha over endless serpents, through barren, inhospitable rocky plains, until at some point the green of the orchards appears. Afghanistan The landscape is largely dry, ocher colored mountainous. Where water comes out of the ground, it suddenly turns green. Rich apricots, plums and grapes grow behind crooked natural stone walls in Alisha and provide cool shade to the gardens. No electric pole and no telephone connection reach the villages here. Life is practically untouched by modernity.
girls need more space
“We used to descend into the valley only in case of emergency,” says Muhammad Rasool, who is estimated to be 45 years old and invites him to his home. “We are all Taliban here, they said down and beat us and harassed us.” Beginning west of Kabul’s city limits, Wardak province had experienced heavy fighting for many years. Down in the field, through which one of the main highways runs southwest from the capital to Kandahar, government troops sat in heavily armored positions awaiting the next attack. The further we went into the mountains, the more pronounced the dominance of Islamists became.
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