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The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has led to international pressure for a new type of rule over the Afghan people, especially Afghan women, the Associated Press reported.
While the Taliban was previously in power from 1996 to 2001, it severely restricted women, confining them to their homes, keeping them from receiving education or working. Now, the Taliban has promised more rights and freedoms for women, but many are fearful of the laws that may be put in place.
According to UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi, girls were allowed to attend secondary school in only five of Afghanistan's provinces, but the Taliban's education minister told him they were currently working on "a framework which they will announce soon", that will allow all girls to attend secondary school, he said.
For Asma Yawari, 17, who now lives in Illinois, keeping in touch with her younger cousin Bahara, 13, who is still in Afghanistan, showed the differences between the two countries.
"We have similar goals and aspirations. The only difference is that I'm able to achieve those goals and aspirations," she said.
Bahara told Asma how upsetting it is that boys her age have been called back into school, but not girls above the sixth grade. Even if she is allowed to return, she questions what she will be allowed to do.
The Taliban are striving to portray themselves as moderate, but many Afghans remain skeptical. Instead of the Taliban's previous harsh interpretation of Islamic law and extreme limitations, the Taliban is "taking their personal, unique interpretation of Islamic law and fusing it with their cultural understanding of women's rights and women's access to the public sphere," said Ali A. Olomi, an assistant professor of Islamic and Middle East history at Penn State University, Abington.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Throughout decades, Afghanistan has been used as grounds for competing powers to play out their proxy wars, and the status of Afghan women is often at the heart of it, says Nura Sediqe, lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Changes over the last two decades brought opportunities for the women in Sediqe's family in Herat province "but then fatalities continued in more rural parts of Afghanistan, so I felt this guilt."
That diversity of experiences of Afghan women is often overlooked, says Mejgan Massoumi, an Afghan American historian.
Some girls and women worked to seize the opportunity of going to school and getting a job; others faced social and economic burdens holding them back, she says.
In bigger cities, like Kabul, women may have more visibility and rights than in the many rural areas of the vast country.
Girls' education has been a battlefield with uneven progress.
Abdi told reporters that the number of children enrolled in schools increased from one million in 2001, when the Taliban were ousted from power, to almost 10 million, including 4 million girls. Despite this progress, 4.2 million children are out of school, including 2.6 million girls, he said.
"The education gains of the past two decades must be strengthened and not rolled back," said Abdi, who added he urged the Taliban to let all girls resume learning.
Masouma Tajik worried her younger sisters may not have access to the same opportunities that have allowed her to become a data analyst in Kabul.
The 22-year-old, career-minded Tajik graduated from the American University of Afghanistan, where she studied on a scholarship.
She recalls feeling scared shortly before the Taliban seized Kabul. "The first reason that I was afraid was my right to live as a woman," she says. "I put so much time and effort on my career."
After the Taliban takeover, Tajik left Afghanistan for Ukraine, where she's been applying for scholarships or refugee programs in different countries.
Her sisters stayed behind in Herat with the rest of the family.
One of her sisters' answers became shorter when they talked: No, she doesn't go to school (their youngest sister does). The sister, who used to tell Tajik that she wanted to join the army, didn't complain but her voice betrayed her sadness, Tajik says. More recently, that sister started sharing that she has been going out, including to the park, and studying English at home.
Tajik has no idea how to help; her own life is in limbo.
"I'm just like giving hope for them," Tajik says. "I have nothing, no plan in my hands for them. She understands this."
Nazia, 30, is also missing a younger sister who is in Afghanistan. The two were separated two years ago, when Nazia moved to America and Hena remained in Kabul.
Hena is growing hopeless about what the future holds.
At times, Nazia, who didn't want her last name used to protect the identity of relatives in Afghanistan, tries to cheer her up; at others, she joins her in crying.
Since she was a child, Hena has dreamed of becoming a doctor.
"Everything has been taken away from us," she says, speaking on Zoom as Nazia translates. She helps her mom with chores at home and, sometimes, reads her textbooks, unsure whether or when she will be able to use them in a classroom again.
And Nazia feels helpless: "I can't do anything for them."
In Afghanistan, Bahara says she had been counting the days since boys beyond the sixth grade have been allowed back to school, but not the girls.
Before, time would fly by as she juggled going to her school and doing her homework with taking outside courses in English and her favorite hobby — sewing.
She scoured Instagram for fashion design inspiration; her family felt it would be inappropriate for her to post photos of herself, but she could browse. Her mother gave her a sewing machine and she made dresses for herself and her sisters.
Now, her world has shrunk. A close friend with whom she had planned a fashion design project left the country. The courses she used to take are no longer meeting. She tries to keep a low profile, wearing a loose, long black gown when she goes out and a tightly wrapped black headscarf that frames her face; she deleted from her phone cherished photos of herself wearing dresses she made.
A sister says she doesn't want to return to school even if allowed back, worried about potential Taliban harassment, Bahara says; but not her.
"I miss my teachers, my books, my friends," she says. "I wake up every day and when I see the clock, I think that that was the time that I should be in school."
Bahara's family is among the many who are hoping to leave the country for multiple reasons.
Talking or texting with her cousin Asma provides some relief.
Bahara holds onto the good memories, like her birthday party, shortly before Kabul fell to the Taliban. She didn't have anything to wear. "In one night, I tailored a beautiful dress."
In her new dress, surrounded by childhood girlfriends, she laughed, played games and blew out the candles.
"I think that was the last day for me that I was happy," she says. "After that ... there is no day to spend without worries."
Meanwhile, Asma recently attended her school's homecoming, but hesitated before posting photos online of herself, dolled up in a sparkling baby blue dress and posing with friends. She didn't want her cousin or other family to think she was flaunting her freedom.
"If I do go hang out with my friends, I feel guilty," she says. "I just feel guilty, like, talking about it."
