Story by Isobel Yeung and Mick Krever

EDITOR’S NOTE:  This story is part of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how the series is funded and more, check out our FAQs.

“I want” – the girl stops herself – “I wanted to be a doctor in the future. But when the Taliban came to Afghanistan, all the doors of schools were closed.”

Inside the Taliban-approved Naji-e-Bashra madrasa – a girls-only religious school on the outskirts of Kabul – a teenage girl wearing a full face covering speaks nervously. Her classmate grabs her arm beneath the table, aware that any criticism of the ruling Taliban government is ill-advised.

Imperfect though these religious institutions are, they are the only option for most Afghan girls over the age of 12 who want any education. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world that prohibits girls and women from getting general education at secondary and higher levels.

In July this year, the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for two of the top Taliban leaders, citing the persecution of women and girls as evidence of crimes against humanity. The Taliban denounced the court as showing “enmity and hatred for the pure religion of Islam.”

The Taliban had originally stated that the suspension of female education would be temporary, and some leaders said that they wanted mainstream schools to reopen once security issues were resolved. But four years on, the fundamentalist wing of the Taliban seems to be winning. Non-religious schools, universities and even healthcare training centers remain closed off to half the population. According to a report published in March by UNESCO, a United Nations agency, nearly 1.5 million girls have been prohibited from attending secondary school since 2021.

Meanwhile, the number of madrasas educating girls and boys across Afghanistan has grown sharply. According to data from the Ministry of Education, 22,972 state-funded madrasas have been established over the past three years.

At the Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, where CNN gained rare access to film in recent weeks, enrolment has skyrocketed since the Taliban began depriving girls of a “mainstream” education.

Because this is a private facility, funded by parents of students who generally live a more privileged life, staff are given slightly more leeway to also teach languages and science alongside Islamic studies. In public madrasas, which are funded by the Taliban government, the curriculum is almost entirely religious in content.

In 2022, the Taliban announced their plans for the school curriculum, setting out many changes that according to a report by the Afghanistan Human Rights Center, a human rights monitoring group, “not only fail to meet the human development goals of international human rights instruments, but also teach students content that promotes violence, opposes the culture of tolerance, peace, reconciliation, and human rights values.”

The report published last December alleges that the Taliban has “tailored educational goals to align with its extremist and violent ideology.” It says that they have amended history, geography and religious textbooks and prohibited the teaching of concepts such as democracy, women’s rights and human rights.

“The students are very happy with our environment, our curriculum, and us,” says the principal of the Naji-e-Bashra madrasa, Shafiullah Dilawar, a self-declared long-time supporter of the Taliban. “The curriculum that is set in the madrasa is set in a way that it is very beneficial for the role of mothers in society, so they can raise good children.”

He denied any suggestion that such institutions were being used to further the Taliban’s ideological goals.

The Taliban rejected multiple requests for an interview.

Secret schools

But many girls and women in Afghanistan consider madrasas no substitute for the education they were increasingly able to access over the two decades preceding the chaotic US withdrawal in 2021.

Nargis is the model student. She’s conscientious, organized, hardworking and studied diligently throughout her life.

At the time that US troops were withdrawing from her city, Nargis was studying economics at a private university. She’d go to classes in the morning, work a part-time job in the afternoon, then teach herself English in the evening. She’d never tire of learning.

“If four years ago you asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I had lots of goals, dreams, and hopes,” she said wistfully. “At that time, I wanted to be a very big businesswoman. I wanted to import from other countries. I wanted to have a big school for girls. I wanted to go to Oxford University. Maybe I’d have my own coffee shop.”

But what broke her heart was seeing the faces of her younger sisters, at the time 11 and 12 years old, who came home one day and told her their school had been closed.

Nargis began collecting all her past textbooks and started teaching the girls everything she’d learned. Other relatives and neighbors began asking for help too – and she found it difficult to say no.

And so, every morning at 6 a.m. sharp, before the Taliban security guards have arisen, around 45 female students from as young as age 12 sneak across the city to Nargis’s family home. Nargis has no support or funding – and often the girls huddle around one textbook, sharing notepads and pens.

Together, they learn mathematics, science, computing and English. Nargis racks her brain for all the knowledge she’s ever accumulated and imparts it to her students.

When the time comes for them to return home, she worries endlessly.

Two months ago, members of the Taliban came to raid the home she was teaching from. She spent a night in jail and was reprimanded for her work. Her father and other male family members begged her to stop, telling her it was not worth it. But terrified though Nargis is, she says she refuses to abandon her students. She switched locations and carried on.

Up until earlier this year, USAID (the United States’ Agency for International Development) had been funding secret schools across the country – known as “community-based education” – as well as study abroad programs and online scholarships. With the cancellation of $1.7 billion worth of aid contracts (of which $500 million was yet to be disbursed) under the Trump administration, several of those educational programs are now winding down.

Nargis herself had been a beneficiary of one such program, studying online for a Bachelor of Business Administration at a US-funded program. Last month, she says, that program was cancelled. It was the nail in the coffin for Nargis’s ambitions. Not just the cancellation of her studies, but “the cancellation of my hopes and dreams.”

“My mum was never educated. She always told us how it was under the previous Taliban government, and so we studied hard… But what is the difference between me and my mum now?” she asked. “I have an education, but we are both at home.

“For what are we trying so hard? For what job and what future?”