KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — They wandered through the museum, listening attentively as their guide explained the antiquities in display cabinets. It could have been any tour group, anywhere in the world. But there was something unusual about this one.

The group of foreigners visiting the National Museum of Afghanistan was made up only of women. Its guide was a woman, too — one of the first Afghan female tour guides in a country whose Taliban rulers impose the severest restrictions on girls and women anywhere in the world.

Somaya Moniry, 24, hadn’t known that tour guides existed, as a profession or even as a concept. But while browsing the internet for help on improving her English language skills, she stumbled upon Couchsurfing, an app where travelers connect with locals and stay in their homes.

After hosting a traveler, “I became very passionate about it and it was very interesting for me,” Moniry said. “It was very unique. I have never heard about it before, so I said: ‘Why not (do) this?’”

As she showed that first visitor around her hometown in western Afghanistan, she saw a new side to her country.

“Most of the things that we have heard (about Afghanistan) was just … negativity. The focus of the people, focus of the media, focus of headlines, all of them were just the negativity. And definitely we get influenced by that,” Moniry said.

But for her, Afghanistan is far more nuanced. While there are undoubtedly problems in a place recovering from decades of war and chaos, there is also another side to the complex, stunning country. Her love for her homeland runs deep, and she is eager to share it. She hopes to gradually change people’s perceptions.

One of those visitors is Australian Suzanne Sandral. She originally wanted to see Afghanistan in the 1960s but the pressures of having a family kept her away. Now at 82, she was part of Moniry’s women-only tour group in Kabul.

Afghanistan surprised her.

“It’s not what I expected at all. I expected to feel rather fearful. I expected to be given a lot of … accusatory looks. Not at all,” she said during a pause in sightseeing. “Wherever you go in the streets, if you smile at someone and give them a little nod or say hello, you get a terrific response. So it’s very different.”

Jackie Birov, a 35-year-old independent traveler from Chicago who was not part of the tour group, called the Afghan people “unbelievably hospitable.”

However, “I’m very aware that I have a lot more freedom than local women,” she said.

A fledgling industry

Four decades of war have kept tourists away from Afghanistan. But while the Taliban’s takeover of power in August 2021 sent thousands of Afghans fleeing and shocked the world, the end of its insurgency against the previous U.S.-backed government also marked a sharp drop in violence.

Attacks still occasionally occur, mainly by an Islamic State affiliate, and Western countries advise against all travel to Afghanistan. Still, the improved security is increasingly attracting foreign visitors drawn by the dramatic scenery, millennia of history and a deeply ingrained culture of hospitality.

Tourism is a fledgling industry, with annual visitors in the low thousands. Most are independent adventure travelers. But guided package tours are increasing from countries as diverse as China, Greece, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government is keen to welcome them. Isolated on the international stage — officially recognized only by Russia, which did so in July — the government sees how potentially lucrative tourism could be.

Tourist visas, typically single-entry ones valid for stays of up to 30 days, have become relatively simple to obtain from the few embassies that issue them. Regular flights connect Kabul with major transit hubs such as Dubai and Istanbul.

A question of ethics

For some, the idea of visiting Afghanistan as a tourist is morally abhorrent, particularly given the government’s treatment of women.

Girls are banned from education above primary school level, and women live under myriad restrictions. The government dictates what they can wear in public, where they can go and who they can go with. They cannot walk in parks or eat in restaurants. Beauty salons are banned. A very limited number of professions, such as teaching and carpet weaving, are open to them.

And the rules can change quickly.

But those involved in tourism point to the positive effects that visiting Afghanistan can have.

“I truly believe in ethical tourism,” said Zoe Stephens, 31, a British tour leader at Koryo Tours, a company specializing in unusual destinations. “I believe that you can divide politics and people, and that is the main thing for me. … A country is not a sum of its politics. It’s a sum of so much more, it’s a sum of its culture, its history, its food, and especially in Afghanistan, its people.”

Glimpses into the women’s world

Of the three recent tours Stephens led in Afghanistan, two were women-only. Working with local female guides, including Moniry, they combine key attractions with visits to women’s centers and cooking and embroidery classes from local women — worlds that are closed to male travelers.

“We always try and do something a little bit different that really makes our tours unique, as well as something that kind of gives back to the community,” Stephens said. “So I felt that working with the female tour guides does both of those things really well.”

The groups are small — one had eight women, the other three — but the company is looking to build a network of female guides across Afghanistan.

“What we try and do with this tour, especially the women’s tour, is conquer those ethical concerns,” Stephens said. “The idea is to learn about the lives of Afghan women in context.”

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — For six hours every day after school, Nahideh works in a cemetery, collecting water from a nearby shrine to sell to mourners visiting loved ones’ graves. She dreams of becoming a doctor — but knows it is a futile dream.

When the next school year starts, she will be enrolling in a madrassa, a religious school, to learn about the Quran and Islam — and little else.

“I prefer to go to school, but I can’t, so I will go to a madrassa,” she said, dark brown eyes peering out from beneath her tightly wrapped black headscarf. “If I could go to school then I could learn and become a doctor. But I can’t.”

At the age of 13, Nahideh is in the last grade of primary school, the limit of education allowed for girls in Afghanistan. The country’s Taliban government banned girls from secondary school and university three years ago — the only country in the world to do so. The ban is part of myriad restrictions on women and girls, dictating everything from what they can wear to where they can go and who they can go with.

With no option for higher education, many girls and women are turning to madrassas instead.

“Since the schools are closed to girls, they see this as an opportunity,” said Zahid-ur-Rehman Sahibi, director of the Tasnim Nasrat Islamic Sciences Educational Center in Kabul. “So, they come here to stay engaged in learning and studying religious sciences.”

The center’s roughly 400 students range in ages from about 3 to 60, and 90% are female. They study the Quran, Islamic jurisprudence, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Arabic, the language of the Quran.

Most Afghans, Sahibi noted, are religious. “Even before the schools were closed, many used to attend madrassas,” he said. “But after the closure of schools, the interest has increased significantly, because the doors of the madrassas remain open to them.”

No recent official figures are available on the number of girls enrolled in madrassas, but officials say the popularity of religious schools overall has been growing. Last September, Deputy Minister of Education Karamatullah Akhundzada said at least 1 million students had enrolled in madrassas over the past year alone, bringing the total to over 3 million.

Studying the Quran

Sheltered from the heat of an early summer’s day in a basement room at the Tasnim Nasrat center, Sahibi’s students knelt at small plastic tables on the carpeted floor, their pencils tracing lines of Arabic script in their Qurans. All 10 young women wore black niqabs, the all-encompassing garment that includes a veil, leaving only the eyes visible.

“It is very good for girls and women to study at a madrassa, because … the Quran is the word of Allah, and we are Muslims,” said 25-year-old Faiza, who had enrolled at the center five months earlier. “Therefore, it is our duty to know what is in the book that Allah has revealed to us, to understand its interpretation and translation.”

Given a choice, she would have studied medicine. While she knows that is now impossible, she still harbors hope that if she shows she is a pious student dedicated to her religion, she will be eventually allowed to. The medical profession is one of the very few still open to women in Afghanistan.

“When my family sees that I am learning Quranic sciences and that I am practicing all the teachings of the Quran in my life, and they are assured of this, they will definitely allow me to continue my studies,” she said.

Her teacher said he’d prefer if women were not strictly limited to religious studies.

“In my opinion, it is very important for a sister or a woman to learn both religious sciences and other subjects, because modern knowledge is also an important part of society,” Sahibi said. “Islam also recommends that modern sciences should be learned because they are necessary, and religious sciences are important alongside them. Both should be learned simultaneously.”

A controversial ban

The female secondary and higher education ban has been controversial in Afghanistan, even within the ranks of the Taliban itself. In a rare sign of open dissent, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai said in a public speech in January that there was no justification for denying education to girls and women.

His remarks were reportedly not well tolerated by the Taliban leadership; Stanikzai is now officially on leave and is believed to have left the country. But they were a clear indication that many in Afghanistan recognize the long-term impact of denying education to girls.

“If this ban persists until 2030, over four million girls will have been deprived of their right to education beyond primary school,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement at the start of Afghanistan’s new school year in March. “The consequences for these girls — and for Afghanistan — are catastrophic. The ban negatively impacts the health system, the economy, and the future of the nation.”

The importance of religious education

For some in this deeply conservative society, the teachings of Islam are hard to overstate.

“Learning the Holy Quran is the foundation of all other sciences, whether it’s medicine, engineering, or other fields of knowledge,” said Mullah Mohammed Jan Mukhtar, 35, who runs a boys’ madrassa north of Kabul. “If someone first learns the Quran, they will then be able to learn these other sciences much better.”

His madrassa first opened five years ago with 35 students. Now it has 160 boys aged 5-21, half of whom are boarders. Beyond religious studies, it offers a limited number of other classes such as English and math. There is also an affiliated girls’ madrassa, which currently has 90 students, he said.

“In my opinion, there should be more madrassas for women,” said Mukhtar, who has been a mullah for 14 years. He stressed the importance of religious education for women. “When they are aware of religious verdicts, they better understand the rights of their husbands, in-laws and other family members.”