Afghanistan Peace Campaign
KABUL, Afghanistan — Amid sweeping restrictions on women’s education under Taliban rule, a group of former university professors in Afghanistan has launched an all-women online university, offering a rare educational lifeline to thousands of girls barred from attending universities.
Now entering its sixth academic semester, the institution, founded in December 2022, boasts more than 17,000 students enrolled across 15 fields of study, with instruction provided by some 700 volunteer professors, its founder told Amu.
The university was established on December 22, 2022, by Abdul Farid Salangi, a former academic, as a direct response to the Taliban’s order banning female students from higher education. Just days earlier, on December 20, the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education had ordered universities nationwide to close their doors to women — a ban that remains in effect more than 860 days later.
“We believe that without women’s active participation in political, social, and cultural spheres, we cannot build a dynamic and developed society,” Salangi said. “If we aim for a self-sufficient nation, we must include Afghan women as half of society and as an active force.”
The university has become a sanctuary of learning for thousands of young women, including those like Neda, who described how losing access to education led to emotional despair. “I had to quit my studies with a broken heart and joined the online university,” she said. “What I thought would be a mere substitute quickly became a place of growth and empowerment.”
Another student, Nargis Mohammadi, said the closure of universities felt like the death of her dreams. “The doors to education were being shut one after another. I thought my future had disappeared,” she said. “Then I heard of the Online Women’s University — a place without restrictions or discrimination.”
Despite Afghanistan’s economic turmoil and tightening social restrictions, educators behind the initiative say the goal is to provide quality education to women for free, in an effort to soften the blow of educational exclusion and enforced confinement at home.
“The biggest goal we’ve achieved is improving the quality of life for women in Afghanistan,” said Adela Zamani, deputy director of student affairs. “We’ve done this without asking for a single penny, giving them access to something invaluable in this time of crisis.”
The launch and expansion of the university have coincided with the Taliban’s continued exclusion of women from national entrance exams, including the 2025 Kankor — now the third year in which girls have been banned from sitting the exam.
Yet even as these restrictions remain in place, the Online Women’s University continues to grow. For thousands of Afghan girls cut off from traditional education, it stands as a rare source of hope and intellectual refuge in an otherwise bleak academic landscape.