AFGANISTAN: Aselln's Secret Fades With The Taliban

As dawn breaks over Herat and the city yawns into life, the Bakhtiyary family begins the day with breakfast of green tea and bread. On some days, a boiled egg will also appear on the plates of the seven children. After breakfast, the proud mother of these seven children will leave for work.

Hatto Bakhtiyary, 38, lives close enough to Hatifee School, where she teaches, to walk there each morning. Usually accompanying her is her daughter Aselln Sadiqi, 19, who counts herself as one of the more fortunate students because her mother is also her biology and chemistry teacher.

There is not much that is prized more in Afghan culture than education. Rebuilding Afghanistan's education system is an immediate priority for the country's development. The violent and destructive conflicts that have plagued the country over the past 22 years have plunged the education sector into crisis. Even before the war, educational activities were limited, concentrated mainly in major towns and cities, with few children enrolled in rural areas. Much of the previously existing infrastructure has been destroyed and many qualified staff lost.

Institutional restrictions by the Taliban on women's education and employment, and increasing religious content at the expense of a more diversified curriculum, have deteriorated the quality of formal education that was until now only accessible to boys. Afghanistan remains firmly positioned in the lowest rank of education indicators, with most Afghans, especially women, functionally illiterate. In fact, in 1999, only three percent of girls were enrolled in primary school - and attendance at secondary and tertiary levels was even lower.

Aselln remembers only too well what it was like to study during the time of the Taliban. Like many of her friends, she took enormous risks to study in secret in Herat city. She joined with 60 other female students who would sneak into a rented house to learn English three times a week. They were forced to attend the "school" in groups of 10 so they wouldn't arouse suspicion. The students paid a fee to the teacher, who had once taught them at their old school in the city, but they had to buy their own books from the bazaar. These were usually in short supply, depending on whether or not the border with Pakistan was open. Looking back, Aselln starts to reflect on what would have happened if the Taliban had discovered what she and her friends were doing - and then stops. "That is...unmentionable," she replies quietly, after a long pause.

Now in 10th Grade, she will graduate in two years and desperately wants to study journalism at university. "I want to tell people's stories," she says with a smile. "I want to travel and see things and tell my people about them. Now we are free and we can learn many things."

Aselln's mother Hatto is another example of the courage shown by the Bakhtiyary family. After being removed from her teaching position at Hatifee, Hatto herself ran one of Afghanistan's "secret schools". Struggling to cope with her roll of 70 female students, Hatto remembers having to turn away hundreds more who were pleading to study the two science subjects she was offering.

Aselln is assigned to the morning shift of classes at Hatifee School. One of the largest schools in Herat, boasting a population of over 7,000 students (more than half of them girls), there are far too many pupils to accommodate at once, so the 180 teaching staff are obliged to work in long shifts beginning at 7.00am to give children the chance to learn. Many of the students are forced to study in hot, dusty tents behind the school building, as there is nowhere else for them to sit. Several children are carried out each day after fainting in the stifling heat. But as impossible as it is to imagine now, it is only a matter of months until the summer heat of the desert will be replaced by the sub-zero temperatures of the bitter Afghan winter.

World Vision has been working with Hatifee School since May 2002 to assist it to serve its students better. The first phase of the project has been to rehabilitate the existing two school buildings, which were in a state of disrepair after years of neglect under successive, oppressive regimes. Now in full construction phase, World Vision is overseeing the building of a new 10-classroom facility to help ease the cramped conditions. A new well is also being sunk to alleviate the serious water shortages at the school. This is an important first step of a project that World Vision hopes will be a long-term partnership.