Sofia logged in to class on a laptop in Kabul for an online English course run by one of a growing number of educational institutes trying to reach Afghanistan’s girls and women digitally in their homes.
However, when the teacher called on Sofia to read a passage, her computer screen froze.
“Can you hear me?” she asked repeatedly, checking her connection.
Photo: Reuters
After a while, her computer stuttered back to life.
“As usual,” a fellow student equally frustrated with the poor communications said as the class resumed.
Sofia, 22, is one of a growing stream of Afghan girls and women going online as a last resort to get around the Taliban administration’s restrictions on studying and working.
Taliban officials, citing what they call problems including issues related to Islamic dress, have closed girls’ high schools, barred their access to universities and stopped most women from working at non-governmental organizations.
One of the most striking changes since the Taliban were first in power, from 1996 to 2001, is the explosion of the Internet.
Virtually no one had access to the Internet when the Taliban were forced from power in the weeks after the attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001.
After nearly two decades of Western-led intervention and engagement with the world, 18 percent of the population had Internet access, World Bank data showed.
The Taliban has allowed girls to study individually at home and has not moved to ban the Internet, which its officials use to make announcements via social media.
However, girls and women face a host of problems, from power cuts to cripplingly slow Internet speeds, let alone the cost of computers and Wi-Fi, in a country where 97 percent of people live in poverty.
“For girls in Afghanistan, we have a bad, awful Internet problem,” Sofia said.
Her online school, Rumi Academy, saw its enrollment of mostly females rise from about 50 students to more than 500 after the Taliban took over in 2021.
It has had hundreds more applications, but cannot enroll them for now because of a lack of funds for teachers and to pay for equipment and Internet packages, a representative of the academy said.
Sakina Nazari tried a virtual language class at her home in Kabul for a week after she was forced to leave her university in December, but she abandoned it in frustration after battling the problems.
“I couldn’t continue,” she said. “It’s too hard to access Internet in Afghanistan, and sometimes we have half an hour of power in 24 hours.”
Some Afghans have started calling on SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to introduce its satellite Internet service Starlink to Afghanistan, as it has done in Ukraine and Iran, posting requests for help on Twitter.
“We also call on Elon Musk to help us,” Sofia said. “If they would be able to [introduce] that in Afghanistan, it would be very, very impactful for women.”
Online schools are trying to accommodate Afghanistan’s pupils.
Daniel Kalmanson, spokesperson for the online University of the People, which has had more than 15,000 applications from Afghan girls and women since the Taliban took over, said students can attend lectures at any time that conditions allow, and professors grant extensions on assignments when students face connection problems.
The non-profit Learn Afghanistan group, which runs several community-based schools with some remote classes, makes its curriculum available for free in Afghanistan’s main languages.
Executive director Pashtana Durrani said the group makes lessons available via radio and works with international companies to find solutions to poor Internet access.
“Afghanistan needs to be a country where the Internet is accessible, digital devices need to be pumped in,” Durrani said.
Sofia said that Afghan women had grown used to problems over years of war and they know how to persevere.
“We still have dreams and we will not give up, ever,” she said.
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
OUTSPOKEN: Cresenciano Bunduquin, who was killed by motorcycle-riding shooters, hosted a program about ‘hard-hitting’ local issues such as illegal gambling and politics A radio broadcaster was yesterday fatally shot outside his home in the central Philippines, police said, the latest in a long list of journalists killed in the country. Cresenciano Bunduquin, 50, was killed by motorcycle-riding shooters in Calapan City in Oriental Mindoro province, police Colonel Samuel Delorino said. One of the assailants died after Bunduquin’s son hit the shooters with his vehicle as they fled the scene of the pre-dawn attack. “The remaining suspect was able to run off. The hot pursuit operation is still ongoing,” Delorino said. The archipelago nation is one of the most dangerous places in the world for
‘NATURAL CAUSES’: New evidence indicated Kathleen Folbigg’s two daughters died of myocarditis caused by genetics, while a son died of a neurogenetic disorder An Australian woman who spent 20 years in prison was pardoned and released yesterday based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes as she had insisted. The pardon was seen as the quickest way of getting Kathleen Folbigg out of prison and a final report from the second inquiry into her guilt could recommend that the state Court of Appeals quash her convictions. Folbigg, now 55, was released from a prison in Grafton, New South Wales, following an unconditional pardon by state Governor Margaret Beazley. Australian state governors are figureheads who act on instructions of governments. New South
ADMITTED TO FAILURE: North Korea apparently used a new launch pad, which might accommodate bigger space launch vehicles, a Washington-based expert said Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, said her country would soon put a military spy satellite into orbit and promised Pyongyang would increase its military surveillance capabilities, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday. “It is certain that [North Korea’s] military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission,” Kim Yo-jong, a powerful government official in her own right, said in an English-language statement carried by the KCNA. Her remarks came after the failure of a North Korean satellite launch on Wednesday. It might take weeks or more to resolve the