Afghanistan Peace Campaign 
The bridge connecting Afghanistan and Tajikistan in Shughnan district, seen from the Afghan side. Photo by Fabrizio Foschini, 2009
AAN has been listening to a number of female teachers from Shughnan and neighbouring districts, all increasingly depressed by the situation, concerned about losing their profession, the meaning attached to it and the status it affords them.[2] They are distressed by the deterioration of their household economies and their social standing as women in their communities.
Shughnan: a remote corner of Afghanistan
As a hadith of the Prophet goes, one should seek knowledge, even if it means going as far as China.[3] To find quite a deal of knowledge in Afghanistan, however, it suffices to stop shortly before the Chinese border. Travelling across Badakhshan province all the way up one of the branches of the ancient Silk Road, one reaches a remote mountain region, turned by modern boundaries into a cul-de-sac where only a few types of trade thrive, and those largely illegal ones. Shughnan is one of the so-called Pamir[4] districts – high-altitude areas in the northeastern-most corner of Afghanistan, largely inhabited by speakers of Eastern Iranian languages (the Pamiri languages, such as Shughni, Zibaki and Wakhi), who are followers of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam.[5] Subjected in past decades to isolation, and marginalisation from the centres of Afghan politics and economy, the inhabitants of these districts have occasionally experienced discrimination and exploitation at the hands of political and military actors – typically belonging to the Sunni majority of central Badakhshan – who more often than not have enjoyed hegemony and control over the Ismaili areas. The Ismaili inhabitants, given their condition of minority and vulnerability, have also proven to be a peaceful and law-abiding community, keen on cooperating and supporting a central government able to bring a degree of security and order. Moreover, despite their remote location and poverty, the residents of these districts have consistently displayed satisfactory social indicators, at least with respect to educational standards, particularly when it comes to gender equality in education.
Shughnan district represents the foremost example of this, standing out among the other Pamir districts for its early and remarkable achievements in education. Shughnan shares a common history with neighbouring border districts such as Ishkashim and Wakhan: once ruled by an independent lineage of rulers who controlled the territory on both banks of the Panj river[6] these districts were integrated into Afghanistan only at the end of the 19th century during the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan (r 1880-1901). Shortly afterwards, in 1895, a boundary commission set the river’s course as the border between Afghanistan and Russia (now Tajikistan). It was a most unsatisfactory choice, given that the riverbanks in this deep-cut and high-elevation valley represented the only suitable areas for human settlements; the new border split communities and separated many farmers from their fields. Shughnan, in particular, which until then had been the most prominent of the Ismaili principalities, lost much of its agricultural land, which was located on the right bank of the river. Bereft of agricultural resources other than its famed mulberry orchards, the population was unable to support itself. The area went through hard times, including an armed rebellion in 1925 against the oppressive rule and heavy taxation of government officials.
Living to teach and teaching to live
A turning point came only a couple of decades later, when, likely through the good offices of a Shughni (his name lost to time), who had been brought to Kabul in his youth as a ghulam bacha (a court page raised to serve the Afghan kingdom as a loyal official outside the system of tribal alliances) and who had not forgotten the plight of his home district, a high school was built in Shughnan. It was inaugurated in 1939-40. Lycee Rahmat was a unique institution in such a remote district at a time when high schools could only be found in provincial capitals or large cities. It created opportunities for locals to access higher education and pursue a career in teaching, as an alternative form of livelihood to the limited farming still possible. In the following decades, the Afghan educational system slowly expanded to rural areas throughout the country and the district of Shughnan became a rich source of teachers not only for Badakhshan but also for provinces further afield. As one of the teachers interviewed recalled, in the absence of other local commodities, education became an exportable resource for the people of Shughnan:
There’s very little agricultural land in Shughnan district, but the area is very populated. Local people have no other income. For this reason, if more than one person in a family is literate and educated, they will find a job outside the area, in Afghanistan’s other districts and cities. The ability to work anywhere means they can contribute to the family’s income.
This trend did not stop during the decades of war that hit the country, starting in 1978. Shughnan remained firmly under Kabul’s control almost until the collapse of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government in 1992. Its schools remained open even during the civil war that followed (1992-2001), between mujahedin factions and then between the Taleban and the government led by Burhanuddin Rabbani. It was actually in the 1990s that, despite the dire lack of funding, the district saw the inauguration of a teacher training centre, the only one in the province outside Faizabad, officially sanctioning its role as a provider of teachers for the broader northeast of Afghanistan, which, back then, was under the control of Rabbani’s government (see AAN reporting here).
The establishment of the Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN) operations in Badakhshan in the late 1990s and the strengthening of the ties between the locals and international Ismaili communities and institutions, with their strong emphasis on the importance of learning, certainly favoured the continuation of what had already become a local tradition and export commodity for Shughnan. Despite the increase in the number of teacher training centres and prospective teachers across the province and the rest of Afghanistan in the years after 2001, Shughni teachers kept their primacy and benefited from some economic and social improvements in their positions thanks to the financial support offered by the international community. Indeed, many interviewees told AAN that if previously, most Shughni families already had a member working as a teacher under the Republic, the ratio increased, with some households counting as many as three or even five.
A former superintendent at the Directorate of Education in Shughnan district estimated the number of Shughnis employed as teachers at the fall of the Republic to have been around 2,500, of whom 1,800 were employed outside the district, while other interviewees claimed the number of teachers was actually higher. Whatever the true figure, it is impressive when you consider the district’s population stands just over 30,000. While many teachers are still working in districts across Badakhshan province, the former superintendent said that for decades, Shughni teachers have been sent to as many as 21 provinces. If their destinations have mostly been majority Dari-speaking provinces, such as relatively close-by Takhar and Kunduz, finding work could still lead them, in some cases, even to the opposite corner of the country. Soraya, one of the women teachers interviewed, confirmed that this is still very much the case today: “They [teachers from Shughnan] travel to all districts of Badakhshan and even to Herat and Farah provinces, which are far from Badakhshan.”
With the bad state of road infrastructure, compounded more often than not, for many decades, by security problems, travelling could take days, if not weeks. The roads have not improved much since the 1950s. Before the IEA’s new interest in improving connections to China through the Wakhan corridor (read Khaama Press here), hardly any road building had taken place in the Pamir region. Even now, although roads leading to Ishkashim and Wakhan have been improved, Shughnan remains one of the most inaccessible districts in Afghanistan, and during the long winter months, travel is only possible on foot or by horse.
Most teachers return to Shughnan at the end of every school term to spend the holidays with their families, although others, said Soraya, travel to their school at the start of the school year in the month of Hamal, which starts on 21 March, and return home in the month of Qaws, which starts on 21 November. “That means they come home [only] after nine months – although some take their families with them.” Indeed, some teachers have eventually settled in their places of work and bring their families along.
In 2009, a Shughni teacher employed in Faizabad told the author how he would live almost ten months a year in a rented room with other colleagues in the provincial capital and undertake adventurous travel, partly by car and partly on foot (one week each way) to return to Shughnan for the long winter break. Things were only slightly easier during the two-week summer break, when the seasonal opening of a high mountain pass over the Shiwa Plateau, reduced the trip to two days only.
This lifestyle is more typical for Shughni men. The mobility of Afghan women has always been hampered by higher hurdles. Even so, female teachers from this district have also travelled for work. Indeed, another teacher interviewed estimated that in recent times, the number of Shughni women teachers employed outside the district was nearly three times more than those teaching in the district itself. In other words, some 900 female Shughni teachers had been (or are currently) working away from home, especially in districts in Badakhshan, where Shughni women traditionally accounted for a large share of the female teachers in Faizabad, as well as elsewhere in the province (see AAN’s 2012 report on education in Badakhshan here).
The fact that many male teachers take up positions in faraway places has further enhanced the central economic and social role of women teachers in Shughnan, as they came to make up roughly half of the local teachers, and are often the main breadwinners in their families. Moreover, teaching is a profession that commands much respect in the area. Despite the insufficient salaries teachers have received for most of Afghanistan’s recent history (see AAN’s 2015 report detailing the problems in contract and salary conditions of teachers here), households in Shughnan that claim teachers among their members have generally fared better economically than those who are solely farmers. Over the decades, this, coupled with other cultural, religious and political traits of the local Ismaili population, gave many Shughni female teachers a prominent role in local society.
Multiplying the effects of education
“If you teach a man,” said one of the interviewees, “you teach one person, but if you teach a woman, you educate three people.” By quoting this local saying she went on to explain how an educated woman, necessarily, brings about a change inside her family, as the benefits of her education are amplified. The importance attached to education and the respect afforded to educators was quite apparent in the words of many of the teachers we interviewed. Stressing the suitability of women in taking up the role of educators both at school and at home, female Shughni teachers firmly believe in the power of education to change local society for the better. Female teachers, they believe, should be at the forefront of this reform, as one young teacher, Fawzia, explained:
Education is fundamental to all-round development everywhere, whether in cities or villages. Education in a remote society that does not have any kind of access to life’s conveniences is the best path to progress. For example, we can see the difference between a family whose members are all educated and a family that isn’t educated. We see the impact an educated family can have on themselves and their area. … [T]his itself causes the economy of a place to grow.
For Soraya, who lost her job as a teacher at a girls’ school in Shughnan after the IEA came to power, female teachers can play a transformative role in conservative rural societies:
Had there been no teachers, today’s world, with these levels of progress, would not exist. Therefore, whether in a rural community or a city, the role of the teacher is very important. But when it comes to how effective the role of female teachers can be, this is even more important in the villages and among the rural people because female teachers can help those people and their families understand the need to break some traditions. On top of teaching students in class, female teachers can put an end to some old customs. For example, in some areas, people believe women should not study and work. So, I can say that female teachers are extremely important because they can change people’s old beliefs and ways of thinking.
The head of a secondary school for girls, Sharifa, also currently at home, shared Soraya’s opinion:
Female teachers can be an example for other women [showing them] that they too could win their freedom and rights and defend those rights. In rural communities where more women are teachers, the other women of the village are more aware and have more independent personalities.
Another teacher, Narges, pointed to the dedication and hard work of female teachers compared to many male colleagues and their value as role models for their pupils and their families. Drawing on her experience outside the district, she said: “Families are encouraged to let their daughters go to school [when they see female teachers].” In Shughnan, she added: “it’s been a long time since anyone has kept their girls from going to school.”
Such views cannot be easily dismissed as over-optimistic, wishful thinking, as they might be, if coming from other rural districts of Afghanistan. The female teachers expressing these views draw on their firsthand experience of and participation in a social reform they have seen, against all odds, become a reality in Shughnan over the past 70 years – at least until the most recent and unexpected turn of events.
Part of a decades-long tradition
Most interviewees trace the presence of female teachers in their district back to an earlier era, one where the politicised struggle between so-called ‘western-influenced’ modern education and ‘fundamentalist’ religious schooling was not top of the agenda in Afghanistan, as Farida explained:
We’ve had female teachers in Shughnan for more than sixty years. My father, who is seventy-five years old, says he had a female teacher when he was a pupil at the Bashar primary school, the only school at that time in Shughnan. Her name was Sayed Begum, and she taught Dari.
Another teacher, Narges, also recalled her teacher.
We had female teachers who, twenty years ago, had been teaching for forty years. Then, they retired and some of them have now died. If we count it this way, seventy to eighty years ago, we had women teachers in Shughnan, teaching in schools that were called village schools.
Testimonies indicate that the early presence of female teachers in Shugnan was not due to the influence of the then (slowly) expanding model of modern education from the centre, which was epitomised by the establishment of four lycées, with foreign curricula and often foreign languages as their medium of education, in Kabul between the 1910s and 1920s. Rather, our interviewees suggest that in their district, it was locals who spurred the transformation that sprang from the modest local high school established in 1940. Also, however, self-taught women who overcame barriers and went on to teach in village schools were important, as Soraya recalls:
Shughnan has had female teachers in its schools for more than 60 years. But I should say that the women who were teachers many years ago didn’t have higher education. Some had mostly received their education at home, reading religious texts and poetry books like Hafez-e Shirazi. But in this way, they became literate and could read and write and were appointed as teachers in Shughnan schools due to necessity. Gradually, they gained experience, added to their knowledge, with a lot of effort, and then could keep teaching.
Shughnan after 2022: a functioning model of local economy and society endangered
Shughnan has been heavily affected by IEA policies on girls’ education. According to the former superintendent interviewed by AAN, more than half of the over 300 women who, until recently, worked as teachers, have lost their jobs. According to other interviewees, some female teachers have been let go because of cuts to teaching staff. Others, who have been forced out of the classroom by the IEA’s restrictions – they include those who had taught at girls’ high schools – still receive a salary, now reduced to 5,000 afghani (USD 70) a month, from the state. In the words of Sharifa:
Some teachers lost their jobs because the education department in Badakhshan downsized or reduced the tashkil after the Taleban came to power. They don’t get a salary. … [O]thers who still sign their attendance sheet receive a salary of 5,000 afghanis. They don’t receive it on time, only after five or six months. Also, the Taleban get 500 Afs of that as zakat and a teacher only receives 4,500. Their salaries have been reduced to half. In the past, they received 10,000 [USD 140] to 13,000 afghanis [USD 185].
Until recently, the teachers sitting at home received an average of 6,500 Afs (USD 92) , but the salaries of all female public sector employees who have been forced to stay home by the IEA has now been reduced to 5,000 Afs by order of the Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada (read AAN report on the pay cut and its consequences here).[7] All the teachers we spoke to knew about the pay cut, but at the time of the interview, they had not seen its application. At any rate, their monthly salaries, which were hardly sufficient to make a living, were never paid on time, they said, and were usually delayed by four to six months. “They pay our salaries,” said Narges, “with a delay of four months and with the money we finally get, we can hardly cover our expenses for two of the months we’ve waited.”
Interviewees also reported that many Shughni teachers employed outside the district, both those commuting periodically back home and others who had settled elsewhere, had now returned to Shughnan after losing their jobs. Most of them, especially women, who are barred from most other jobs, could not find other ways to earn a living. After spending some months searching for employment, they were in dire circumstances and many had decided to try and leave Afghanistan for good, as Sharifa said:
With the coming of the Taleban government, most of those who were working in the provinces became unemployed and returned to their homes. They either live in a desperate and inadequate situation or have gone to Pakistan or Iran.
This is not the first time Shughni teachers have faced hardship, privations and bans. After the arrival of the mujahedin in 1991-92, for example, the local situation became complicated. The local Ismailis were accused of having supported the PDPA and some, especially those who had worked for the Kabul government, such as teachers, risked harassment. Initially, restrictions were placed on female teachers, as Sharifa recalled:
When the mujahedin came and Burhanuddin Rabbani became the head of state in Afghanistan, he had a somewhat extreme behaviour. He didn’t let female teachers teach at boys’ schools. But after a while, this problem was solved and everything returned to its place. There was another problem, though. Rabbani and the mujahedin couldn’t govern and the salaries of teachers and employees were cut. Despite that, the teachers, without any salary or benefits, wouldn’t let the schools close. They kept going to school and teaching students.
The comparison ends there. Back then, Shughni teachers eventually saw their positive social role recognised, if not remunerated. The efforts by those teachers to keep education alive across northeastern Afghanistan during the difficult decade before 2001 – with no government support and only limited economic help from NGOs such as the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan and AKDN – are still remembered in Shughnan. Several local teachers speaking to the author back in 2009 referred to this time as their ‘jihad’, comparing it to the service to the Afghan nation that mujahedin fighters boasted of. From the more recent interviews, it appears that keeping schools alive during that hard time still provides a source of pride for teachers who lived through it, including Sharifa:
Shughnan was the only district to have already had a teacher training college 35 years ago. Boys and girls studied there in the same class. Many boys’ schools had female teachers, which was rare in other parts of Afghanistan. … We had English language teachers who taught a course in Faizabad and hundreds of boys were studying on that language course whose teachers were Shughni women.
Pride gives way to despair
The pride in their perseverance in the face of difficulties has now given way to despair and a sense of futility. Many interviewees feared the government could progressively and quietly do away with their already heavily reduced salaries. They felt they could do nothing to prevent this, as under the IEA “teachers are not allowed to say anything” and “no one has the right to protest.”
The situation is, of course, especially bad for those women who are no longer allowed to work. Interviewees equated the plight of those who have been compelled to stay at home but still receive a heavily reduced salary to that of those who have completely lost their jobs. “In general,” said Farida, “those who taught the sixth grade and above are at home, which means losing our jobs because we don’t work only for a salary. We enjoyed working and serving the children.
These feelings relate to the loss of purpose and role in life, the fear of even their meagre salaries disappearing and hopelessness about their ability to mobilise to defend their rights. These are largely coincident with those expressed by other female public workers countrywide, as detailed in this recent AAN report. Our interviewees also made clear that the economic and psychological impact of IEA policies were exacting a heavy toll not only on the women but also on their families. One of the teachers, Farida, explained:
It’s a very bad and painful situation for women because we’re not allowed to leave the house and our economy and expenses are now completely dependent on other family members. … Apart from the fact that the behaviour of the families has changed, the women themselves are suffering from mental problems. This situation has affected many women and girls with mental problems. The women are nervous and sometimes fight with other members of the family because they’re mentally unstable.
Her feelings were echoed by Sharifa:
Every family has a different way of life and perspective. However, in general, I can say that when the family’s economy weakens, without doubt, a person’s mental status or psyche is damaged as well. This problem causes one to be in a bad temper and there’ll be conflict at home with one person blaming another.
Another problem is that female teachers and women in general who used to work and were not dependent on their family members, that is, their husbands or fathers or brothers, had their own funds. But now their husbands or brothers have to pay for them, and that’s another, separate issue. In itself, it’s a problem for women, how much money they get from their fathers or brothers or husbands. This is really hard and painful for them.
The possibility that such dramatic changes in the economic situation of women could lead to a loss of social status is real, even in liberal and progressive communities like those of Shughnan. Conflicts and subjugation inside families are likely to increase, especially in poor and resourceless regions like this one. Over the past decades, as the author found on a research trip in 2009, the area has been hit particularly hard by opiate addiction, exacerbated by its position on a trafficked border. Additionally, local women are not accustomed to being dependent on men and are unlikely to easily abide by their new circumstances of seclusion and subjugation. Soraya has seen evidence of this already:
Unfortunately, some female teachers complain about bad behaviour inside the family, especially women whose husbands are drug addicts. Sometimes, their husbands even beat them because they used to give them some money to buy opium, heroin, or whatever they were using. But now, these men can’t work and neither can their wives, so in some families, women are suffering violence.
Interviewees like Narges also mentioned an increase in forced marriages, prompted by the economic woes faced by families: “Some families behave badly. Some have forced girls who were teachers to get married. This will eventually drive the girls crazy.”
Over the past spring, an independent monitoring NGO reported several instances of honour killings or suicide among girls as a result of being pressured by their family to marry in other Pamir districts such as Ishkashim and Wakhan (see also this report by Afghan Witness on the issue). An interviewee, a student of midwifery from Ishkashim, confirmed the link between those deaths and the lack of access to education and prospects:
Today, teachers who’ve studied and gained bachelor’s and master’s degrees have turned to handicraft skills to meet the economic needs of their families. … The situation of women who’ve stopped working and are not active is not so good. It is because, in the past, they used to be self-sufficient and could at least provide for the necessities. Along with men, women were also supporters of their families, financially. Now, the behaviour of some men towards women might have changed because women who used to work outside are now at home. It’s a major challenge for men and women in our society.
She also spoke about the impact on those who should still have been at school:
Nowadays, the closure of schools is a big challenge for girls. They’ve lost their goals and dreams during the three years of school closure. Almost all girls are forced to get married, and where I live, every day, I see an educated girl who’s deprived of schooling being married off. They’re disappointed and worried because it’s the girls who educate a generation, but now they’re deprived of an education. Just where I live, I’ve seen several cases of girls taking their own lives. This is all down to unemployment and the lack of education.
AAN tried to find out about the occurrence of such incidents in Shughnan. Some of the teachers interviewed, such as Sharifa, confirmed that they have also happened there:
The fact that a girl isn’t allowed to study and achieve her ambition is the biggest problem in her life. And when a woman isn’t allowed to work outside the home, all her freedom and rights are taken away from her and she’s imprisoned at home. Then, what is left for her? Right now, I can say that women and girls are literally imprisoned in their homes, where all their rights have been taken away. Some families force their daughters to get married. Unfortunately, we have seen the suicide of several girls who were educated. After the universities were closed, their fathers forced them to marry, but these girls preferred to die.
That it was often highly educated girls who, in the face of their families’ decision to get them married, preferred to take their own lives was also mentioned by Mahram, a resident of Bashar village in Shughnan who said he knew some such cases. He cautioned, though, that it would be difficult to gather information about them, adding that he had heard from a teacher from Roshan (the northern part of Shughnan district) that the local Taleban authorities had held a meeting with the village heads in that area, stressing that such incidents should not be discussed publicly or with the media.
Shughnan district will not lose overnight the cultural and social achievements made over several decades by its own people that have become part of its identity. Nevertheless, the district is undoubtedly facing one of its darkest times, Fawzia said:
Sometimes, because life and economic problems increase, people’s tolerance becomes low and this causes them to behave inappropriately. … [T]he treatment of women in Shughnan district is generally very good, whether they’re responsible for their families or unemployed, as is the case now. Only some narrow-minded people or [those] who aren’t educated have changed their behaviour. The main challenge in our region with school closures is that some girls are forced to get married. That is not because of family pressure, but because of unemployment, economic problems and despair. … [T]here are some people who endure problems and are patient. From my personal point of view, I have a feeling of darkness, that there is no light to see ahead. We don’t feel we see the daylight. We feel it is always night, darkness and nightmares. We feel good dreams never come true.
The unique position of Shughnis, especially its women, as the country’s educators is at risk of vanishing as though it were only a dream. The people of this district, who lost half their land when it became part of Afghanistan and painstakingly worked out a solution to overcome their resulting lack of resources and managed to become part of and contribute to the country’s life in such a vital sector as education, now stand to be left without viable options.
Shughnan had already been put to the test during the civil war of the 1990s, but this is the first time that its hard-gained, fragile economy – one based on learning and teaching – is facing outright obliteration. Such a scenario would not only see the deterioration of the district’s hard-won social development but also lead to significant economic decline. Furthermore, if more Shughni teachers, men and women alike, lose their jobs, livelihoods and social standing, and are forced to migrate in search of a livelihood and a better life, the dramatic loss of human capital and expertise for Afghanistan would be incalculable.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
References
| ↑1 | In its July 2023 accountability session, the IEA mentioned that 92,000 women were working in the public education sector, although not all were employed as teachers (see this AAN report). |
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| ↑2 | The names of all interviewees have been changed in order to protect their privacy. |
| ↑3 | A famous hadith, though most Islamic scholars consider its chain of transmission to be daʿīf (weak) and thus likely spurious, it has sometimes been considered hasan (fair) on account of its wide circulation. It appears as hadith number 28,697 in Kanz al-Ummal fi Sunan al-Aqwal wa al-Af’al (Treasures of the Doers of Good Deeds) by Ali ibn Abd-al-Malik al-Hindi, 1472 CE – 1567 CE. |
| ↑4 | Geographically, the Pamir Mountains are located mostly in Tajikistan on the right side of the Amu River and its headstream the Panj, with the exception of Wakhan district in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province. However, in Afghanistan, Shughnis, Zibakis, Wakhis and other communities in the area are often referred to as Pamiris. |
| ↑5 | Ismailis separated from other Shia Muslims as they recognised a different line of imams from among the descendants of caliph Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, as the rightful heirs to religious and political leadership. They live nowadays in many countries across the world; in Afghanistan they inhabit mostly Badakhshan and Baghlan provinces. |
| ↑6 | The Panj is the headstream of the Amu Darya which forms Afghanistan’s border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and partially with Turkmenistan. |
| ↑7 | On 2 June 2024, the de facto Directorate General of Administrative Affairs issued a letter purporting to “standardise” the salaries of women civil servants hired by the former administration to 5,000 Afghanis per month, regardless of grade, pegging women’s salaries to the lowest possible level. However, on 7 July 2024, the de facto Ministry of Finance issued a letter clarifying that the order would be applied to women civil servants who did not attend work daily or did not perform their duties according to their job description, and that it did not apply to women who were reporting to work and performing their duties (read this UN report). |