Afghan girls flee forced marriage as Taliban keeps schools closed

Alia traveled hundreds of miles from her village in Daykundi province to Kabul last year to escape a forced marriage. She made the trip by taxi with her female cousin, both covered head to toe as required, without a male escort. They passed Taliban checkpoints without being stopped.

She told her family she was visiting friends. In reality, she enrolled in a private English course in the capital. At 19, she knew that staying home would mean marriage.

It has been nearly five years since the Taliban barred girls over 12 from school. Private courses and religious schools remain the only options for further study, and only for those who can pay. Alia's parents are funding her course, though they now tell her marriage is her best option since she cannot attend university or work.

She has received marriage proposals and fears the family she marries into may restrict her more than her parents do. Still, she says she will resist marriage if her family does not force her.

In western Kabul, Shama, now the mother of two young daughters, describes a different outcome. Four years ago, at 18, her mother Kamila arranged her marriage. Kamila, a widow who once cleaned houses to keep her daughters in school, said she feared Taliban fighters would question why an unmarried young woman remained at home.

Shama had wanted to become a doctor. She turned down earlier proposals because education mattered more to her. Now she says she feels trapped and lives only for her children. Her younger sister Nora, 18, says she too is being pressed to marry and fears she will never return to school.

Taliban officials have given shifting reasons for keeping secondary schools and universities closed to girls. In 2021, a spokesman said schools would reopen once security improved. In 2022, officials cited concerns from religious scholars about girls traveling to school. In 2024, deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said the leadership had not yet decided. This month he pointed to enrollment figures for boys and younger girls and referred questions to the education ministry, which did not respond.

The United Nations has warned that if the ban continues until 2030, more than two million girls will have been denied education beyond primary school. Women interviewed for this story said they feel the world has moved on.

"If we hadn't been forgotten, then something would surely have been done by now," Alia said. Nora asked why she was born in Afghanistan. Kamila had a message for mothers elsewhere: "In a world where your daughters are allowed to study and work, let them do it."