ONE MORNING late last year, Setareh's students found a landmine in their classroom. It was hidden under a bag in the mud-brick building of the first girls school in her rural Afghan village.
The landmine was not, of course, unexpected. The Taliban had posted a note in the village mosque a few weeks earlier, ordering all girls schools to close. And another "night letter" left at a nearby school had warned: "Respected Afghans: Leave the culture and traditions of the Christians and Jews. Do not send your girls to school." Otherwise, it said, the mujahedin of the Islamic Emirates, the name of the former Taliban government, "will conduct their robust military operations in the daylight."
The United States has trumpeted its role in putting Afghan girls back in school as one of the most positive developments since it toppled the Taliban in 2001. On International Women's Day, March 8, President Bush declared: "Today in Afghanistan, girls are attending school. That speaks well for Afghanistan's future." But Setareh, her students and most other Afghan girls are still fighting for that future.
Even before the recent upsurge in fighting in southern Afghanistan, fewer than half of primary-school-age girls were in school. Nearly a third of the country's districts had no girls schools at all. That's not to say that commendable gains haven't been made: 5.2 million students are enrolled in school. When the Taliban fell in 2001, only about 775,000 children were in school, the World Bank estimated.
That's an accomplishment. Still, 5.2 million is only a bit more than half of all Afghan children, and this modest progress is in danger of unraveling. The Taliban has been targeting boys schools and coeducational schools that offer the secular education promoted by the central government, and especially girls schools. They have killed teachers, threatened students and burned schools. Based on my research on the ground in Afghanistan, I believe that hundreds of thousands of students who were attending school are now shut out, especially in the south and southeast.
Over just four days in December, armed men shot and killed a teacher, a school gatekeeper and a male student in Helmand province. An instructor had been warned to stop teaching girls and boys in the same classroom. In January, armed men in Zabul province beheaded a high school headmaster in front of his children. By March, half of the schools in the province had closed. Afghan education officials say that attacks now average one school a day.
