This is how the Taliban indoctrinate girls: "Since I go to the madrassa, I cover my face"

Special correspondent in KabulFrom the outside, it looks like a small place, but upon entering, stairs lead down to a huge basement, carpeted and divided into different rooms with large curtains. There, dozens of girls, young women, and women memorize the Quran, sitting on the floor with crossed legs and in front of small plastic tables on which they rest the holy book. All of them have their hair covered with a veil. Some also cover their faces with a mask, or with a black niqab typical of Gulf countries, which only leaves their eyes exposed and which women in Afghanistan had never worn. The traditional veil was the burqa, blue or any other color, although the result is the same: to be covered from head to toe. It was also not common for them to wear black gloves so that their hands would not be seen, but some young women who are sitting studying the Quran also wear them.

This August 15th marks five years since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. This means they have been in power for as long as they were during their first regime. The difference is that now there seems to be nothing that will make them falter, quite the opposite, and moreover, they are sowing the seeds to perpetuate themselves. This is evidenced by the study "The Taliban's Madrassas. Ideological Consolidation, Gender Persecution, and Future Stability of Afghanistan", which the exile network for Afghan civil society support Hamrah published last June and the reading of which is truly disturbing.

According to this study, when the Taliban came to power in 2021, there were five thousand madrassas in Afghanistan, meaning five thousand Islamic schools. Most operated informally, without government control. Currently, there are more than 23,000 such schools, according to data from September 2025, and all are regulated by the Taliban regime. There has never been such an expansion.

In madrassas, both boys and girls can attend. The Taliban do not impose restrictions in this regard. However, there are separate centers for each sex. Boys' madrassas are usually located within mosques and are entirely free, while girls' madrassas are in private premises, such as the one in the basement with a carpeted floor, and payment is required to attend class.

Since the Taliban have prohibited girls from studying from the age of 12 onwards, meaning they cannot attend school beyond primary education, many attend madrassas as an alternative. That is, families who can afford it try to make an economic effort so that their daughters can at least study in these Islamic schools. With all that this entails. In other cases, it is adult women who, because they cannot find work or the Taliban do not allow them to practice their profession, also go there to at least do something and have an excuse to leave home in a country where women currently have to go with a mahram, meaning a male relative, to most places and are not even allowed to walk in a park.

Getting married and having children

“They teach us that we must get married, have children, accept everything the husband says and be responsible for spreading Islam,” explains Diba, 26, who is a midwife but unemployed, and is one of those who attend the madrassa because she is bored at home. Another 23-year-old girl, Mushgan, admits that she did not usually cover her face when she went out on the street, but since she has been studying at the madrassa for a year, she wears a niqab that covers her from head to toe, and even wears black gloves on her hands. She is one of the students at the carpeted basement madrassa: when she takes off her veil, her appearance changes radically. She is a jovial and cheerful young woman.

“The teacher teaches with her face covered and we should cover ours too, but it’s too hot,” says Usra, 15, as she puts on the veil she is obliged to wear at the madrassa. According to her, it’s unbearable: it’s too thick for summer. It is a dark green niqab, which has a kind of built-in veil to cover the face. They sell it at the madrassa itself for 350 afghanis (about 4.5 euros) and it is a mandatory uniform for all students.

Usra, like many other girls, also started attending madrassa due to the impossibility of continuing her studies at school. However, she is quite satisfied: she has the sort which at their madrassa they do three hours a day of religious studies, and one hour of other subjects such as mathematics, science, computing... He trusts that, in this way and even if it takes much longer, he will be able to take most of the secondary education subjects. The problem is that he will not obtain any official diploma to corroborate that he has completed these studies.

In fact, madrassas, although it may sound contradictory, have become a small way out for girls in Afghanistan to continue their studies. All centers must be registered, but the Taliban do not always control what is taught exactly within their classrooms. The only conditions they set for the opening of these schools are that part of their teaching staff has studied Islamic studies, and that the centers pay a kind of tax to the regime: 20,000 afghanis (about 257 euros) at the time of inauguration, and another 12,000 afghanis (154 euros) each year, according to the owner of a madrassa who prefers to remain anonymous.

Clandestine education

This has led to centers that present themselves as madrassas clandestinely teaching the subjects that girls should learn in secondary education. For show, however, they try to maintain appearances. In one of these centers, there are copies of the Quran on the shelves, and all the students dress in strict black. When asked if they like dressing this way, they all answer in unison and without hesitation: “Nooo!”. “We prefer light colors,” says one. Another opts for lilac. And one more concludes: “We like any color, except black.”

In what they also all agree on is that they would like to work, to be someone in life: Faribar, 14 years old, wants to be a doctor; Soman, 18, a judge; Fatema, 13, a psychologist; Mahnush, 17, a pilot... And she sighs, with the hope that the Taliban will disappear one day: “Perhaps there will be changes in the future.” Another girl, Mariam, 15 years old, goes even further: she states that she wants to be president of Afghanistan so that women can decide about their lives. “Don’t forget us,” they all affirm, as they allow themselves to be photographed one by one so that someone from abroad will listen to them, someone will do something for them.

Just in front of the basement's carpeted madrassa, there is a girls' school. When classes end, they all leave smiling, talking animatedly, some playing… Obviously, they are all under 12 years old. The scene looks like Afghanistan from five years ago, when the Taliban had not yet regained power, as if time had frozen. Nevertheless, there is a small nuance that makes it different: now the students are obliged to wear a chapan, a kind of black robe down to their feet. Before they also wore black and covered their hair with a white veil, but the dress was much shorter, above the knees. Similarly, the boys' uniform has changed: they now have to wear a white shalwar kameez – the traditional Muslim garment of a tunic and wide trousers –, and wear a small turban on their heads.

No drawings of people or animals

Fauzia is a biology teacher in a public school and assures that many other things have changed. “We cannot put anything that breathes on the walls,” she says. That is to say, there can be no drawings or photographs of any living being, whether people or animals. As she explains, the cheerful illustrations that previously decorated the walls of many educational centers have been replaced by writings that say, for example, “a woman with a hijab is like a pearl in a shell”.

The school curriculum has also been modified. She opens the biology book and shows the chapter on gestation. As she explains, when they reach this chapter, they have to skip it entirely, they cannot teach anything it says. The chapter talks about estrogens, sperm, ovaries..., and includes drawings of the male and female reproductive systems. Nothing out of the ordinary. The subjects of art and civic education have also been eliminated, as have negative references to the Taliban in history books, and the hours of Islamic religion classes have been increased. Furthermore, teachers themselves must study religion and be regularly examined to demonstrate their knowledge if they wish to continue teaching.

Nadia, who is also a teacher in a public school, adds that women can only teach boys up to the age of 10. From that age onwards, the teacher must be a man. But since there are not enough male teachers because teaching in Afghanistan has traditionally been a women's profession, “the students have no one to teach them in some subjects,” she assures.

Online training

With this whole panorama, an alternative is online education. Especially for girls. Muzhda, 22, started studying architecture at Kabul University but, with the arrival of the Taliban to power, she could not continue. She is now studying civil engineering at Women Online University, as she has not found architecture studies online anywhere. The online university is free, but she has to pay for internet connection, which is not cheap at all. In addition, it is often too slow and she cannot follow classes well, she laments.

There are other options that do cover the cost of the internet, such as the Afghan German Online High School, Pax Populi Academy High School, or the Afghanistan Education Students Outreach Project (AESOP). All of them are private initiatives or community-driven. Despite the international condemnation of the Taliban's ban on education for girls, no country has become involved in ensuring that Afghan women can continue studying in some way.

Will the diplomas from this online education have any validity? And if so, will girls be able to find a job in Afghanistan while the Taliban are in power? "To be at home doing nothing, it's better to get married," concludes an Afghan woman, while looking at her 17-year-old granddaughter, who listens to her dejected and ashamed. This is exactly what many families in Afghanistan are thinking now. And what the Taliban want: that women get married, have children, and stay locked up at home.