Inside Afghanistan's secret schools where women defy the Taliban to educate girls

Geoff Bennett:

It's been nearly five years since the Taliban banned education for all girls older than 12 in Afghanistan. And they didn't stop there. Now every day seems to bring a new law limiting women. But Afghan women are pushing back.

Amna Nawaz:

In this exclusive report, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen and videographer Eric O'Connor visit a secret underground school in the capital city of Kabul, and they were the first international news crew to sit down with the women risking their lives to protest the oppressive rules.

And a note:

The identities of all the women have been changed for their protection.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Each morning, in the early dawn light, dozens of teenage girls pass quietly through an unmarked door that stands open on an unremarkable side street. They climb down a darkened stairway, descending to a stiflingly hot basement hidden behind thick curtains.

They're not allowed to be here. But, in today's Afghanistan, the list of what women and girls are allowed to do is growing ever shorter.

Girls in Afghanistan have been banned from secondary and a higher education for nearly five years now. But across the country, women are pushing back, finding hidden and creative ways to educate the next generation.

Farimah, Founder and Teacher of Secret Girls School (through interpreter): From the very beginning, we unexpectedly had hundreds of students. Everyone was so happy because it was the first door of hope for them after a long time.

Leila Molana-Allen:

When the Taliban suddenly announced a ban on education for girls over 12, Farimah feared both her career and her purpose were gone.

Farimah (through interpreter):

I suddenly felt very lost, so I decided to make this class to bring the girls together and teach them whatever I know.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Founding a school inside her home was the one way she and her family felt they could make the girls feel safe. But they never expected so many to come. They're now teaching hundreds of teenagers. They don't advertise. These girls all found this place by word of mouth. The whole community keeps their secret to protect them.

Farimah (through interpreter):

This strong commitment that our students show, it motivates us to work harder for them. And they are very, very intelligent girls. They're very willing to learn, and the most positive thing is that their families are also supporting them.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Thirteen-year-old Niloufar spent her 12th year, the last of her permitted education, terrified of what would come next. Suddenly, friends told her parents she could continue learning here in secret.

She's so inspired by her teachers, she now wants to follow in their footsteps.

Niloufar, Student (through interpreter):

Now that we are studying here and are supported, I feel very happy and hopeful. When I finish my studies, I want to teach other girls so they can also have the opportunity to receive an education.

Leila Molana-Allen:

It's a rare opportunity for these young girls to get outside and make new friends. Noosha and Maryam, both 18, had been out of school for nearly five years before they found out about these classes a few months ago.

Noosha, Student (through interpreter):

I was extremely hopeless. I felt like I could not breathe, as if I was trapped in a very small prison.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Noosha couldn't sleep for months, dreading what her life would become. Like many girls her age after the Taliban took power, she suffered a severe mental health crisis.

Noosha (through interpreter):

Those were very difficult days. I cried every night. But when I came to the school and realized such a place existed, deep inside, I made a decision and told myself, I must study, I must succeed, and I must become someone who can build a better future for myself and for the next generation.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Maryam knows the new Afghanistan she faces as a woman will not be kind to her. Trapped inside for years with her dreams in ruins and few friends, she'd lost all belief in herself.

Maryam, Student (through interpreter):

In Afghanistan, being a girl or a woman feels like a crime. Even though women already endure many hardships, the Taliban makes life even harder for us. Some young girls in Afghanistan are forced into marriage because all education has been completely closed for us.

Whenever I went somewhere, someone came to our house, people would ask whether I had had a marriage proposal. I was afraid of this.

Leila Molana-Allen:

But now knowing her fellow Afghan women are willing to fight for her future has given her the strength to fight for herself.

Maryam (through interpreter):

Since I came here, I have realized that even if I learn just one word in a day, that one word means the whole world to me. Sometimes, you only understand the value of something after it's taken away from you.

Leila Molana-Allen:

If Farimah and her colleagues are found out, they face prison or much worse.

You're taking a big risk doing this.

Farimah (through interpreter):

Yes, it's a really, really big risk. But we want to take a stand because Afghanistan needs women who should stand up, who should resist. We want to show the world that this is not the end for us.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Some girls haven't been so lucky. Maya was in her next to last year of high school when the Taliban returned to power. Her life changed in a moment. Gone were her dreams of university, a career. And she was married off to a man she's never met. We're speaking on the phone, so her in-laws don't find out and punish her.

Maya, Teenage Bride (through interpreter):

When you realize that you can't reach your dreams and are forced to stay at home and have to focus on your husband, it feels like you have no control over your choices.

Leila Molana-Allen:

She soon fell pregnant, but too small to carry a child, and too young to know how to take care of herself during pregnancy, at three months, she lost her baby.

Maya (through interpreter):

When they told me I had lost my baby, I came home and cried so much. People said I was too young and that I might not be able to get pregnant again. That was the worst day of my life.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Young marriage has always been a concern in more rural, traditional areas of Afghanistan. But in the past five years, activists say rates have surged even in the cities. Girls as young as 14 are now regularly forced into marriage, often to much older men.

Maya fears, without school to keep them safe and occupied into adulthood, many Afghan girls will now face the same fate she did.

Maya (through interpreter):

Girls don't even have the power to stand up and say, we don't want to get married. She becomes the wife of someone without knowing how he will treat her, what difficulties she will face, or what painful days may be waiting for her. Even breathing as a woman here feels difficult. Honestly, I don't have much hope for the future.

Leila Molana-Allen:

In the Western province of Herat, women aren't just losing their right to learn, but their voices too. I have come here to meet a group of girls risking everything to stand up to one of the harshest Taliban crackdowns in the country.

Herat has traditionally been Afghanistan's most diverse and liberal province. But now even this traditional music is banned.

Dima, Protester (through interpreter):

Living in Herat was great. Everyone could dress the way they liked, and every woman had freedom and enjoyed her rights.

Leila Molana-Allen:

All that changed when the Taliban took power. The authorities decided to use Herat as a test case, reasoning that, if they could enforce their most severe vision of women's dress here, hands, feet and face covered, with some even arguing only one eye should be visible, they could enforce it across the country.

Ms. Mubariz, Protester and Secret Online School Founder: Every day when we are waking up, we are reading the news, we are seeing a new rule, and, mostly, like, about 90 percent of the rules are against women. They are just restricting women every day.

Leila Molana-Allen:

The dreaded morality police, enforcers from the Taliban's Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, began patrolling Herat's streets.

Dima (through interpreter):

Those of us who did not normally wear a headscarf had to carry one with us in a plastic bag, so if we got caught, we could quickly put it on.

Ms. Mubariz:

Now women are not going out, because they're afraid that, if we go out, they will arrest us.

Leila Molana-Allen:

So you think it's just a campaign of fear to stop girls from going outside?

Ms. Mubariz:

Exactly, yes.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Have you seen them be violent with people before?

Ms. Mubariz:

Yes. Even one time in the city in Herat, they beat one woman in front of her husband.

Leila Molana-Allen:

When the Taliban introduced even harsher clothing restrictions in June, the women and girls of Herat decided enough was enough. Protesters took to the streets shouting, "Education, work, freedom," and calling for an end to the arbitrary arrest of women.

But the girls say Taliban security forces were ready for them. Spread across the city in armored vehicles and armed to the teeth, they began shooting almost immediately.

(Gunfire)

Dima (through interpreter):

When we reached the university entrance, the Taliban forces attacked us with their guns and fired shots. It was a terrible terrifying experience. In that moment, we felt we might lose our lives.

Leila Molana-Allen:

They ran, ducking through alleys to avoid the flying bullets. At least two people were killed, an unconfirmed number injured and arrested. Even those who reached home safely have lived in fear ever since. They have faced raids and arbitrary searches.

Ms. Mubariz:

They were checking home by home to find those people. Even they checked the hospitals. The people who were injured, they went to the hospital to arrest them.

Leila Molana-Allen:

And since then, they have been arresting people almost every day.

Ms. Mubariz:

Yes, every day.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Arrested girls released from prison are so traumatized they won't breathe a word about what happened to them.

Ms. Mubariz:

When they returned home, all their body was shaking, their hands were shaking, and they couldn't talk about that.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Dima still feels unsafe every time she leaves home. But she'd do it again. She says they have no other choice.

Dima (through interpreter):

When I look at these years, I see that the youth of our people being wasted. This is our life that is being wasted. I know that I might die or they shoot me. But if my actions could help a generation live freely, have education and work rights, I would attend a protest again.

We have to, because we tell ourselves it's either death or victory. I believe one generation has to make sacrifices so the other can live.

Leila Molana-Allen:

And these women continue to resist in their daily lives. They're teachers in a secret online school started by Ms. Mubariz that now illegally educates 12,000 teenage girls across the country.

Ms. Mubariz:

So this book is about depart of women. When I'm starting every day with fear, with so many problems, with new challenge every day, I'm just telling myself that I should have courage.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Every day waiting for a knock on the door to be taken away for the most serious crimes a woman here can now commit, teaching, learning, having a mind of your own.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Leila Molana-Allen in Herat, Afghanistan.