This month marked the beginning of the academic year in Afghanistan. Usually it follows immediately after Nowruz, which fell on March 21st this year. But this year, because several festivals — Ramadan, Eid, and Nowruz (the beginning of the new year) — came one after another, the Taliban announced that the school year would start a week later.

Ever since I was a child going to school, my school, my university class, or later my job was the great hope that carried me through the holidays. In Afghanistan, it rarely happens that we can enjoy a holiday or celebration, so I was always eager for the day I could go back to school, university, or work.

I am not a perfect teacher, but I always try my best to pass knowledge on to my students despite all the struggles I face. 2025 was such a difficult and harsh year in my personal life that sometimes I wonder how I survived. Still, this year I tried my best to always be there for my students. Because it wasn’t only a class for me — the friendship among us, the learning process, the conversations, and the class itself were a kind of therapy.

For this reason, when the Taliban cut the internet in October 2025, for several days I thought it was the end of the world. I was losing my classes, and I believe teaching is one of the few meaningful and precious things I do in my life.

Everyone around me knows how much I love my students and teaching them. My classes are online, and my students join from across the country.

Even though I have never met them in person, we feel a strong connection. My students and I have become friends, but we never share personal problems inside the class — our main focus is on learning. I often receive kind, heartfelt messages from my students telling me that they love my classes and learn so much every day.

Years after I became a teacher, nothing has changed: I still have that same feeling of getting through the holidays so I can hold my classes again. This time we had a longer break — before it, there were final exams, and then the Eid holidays. I was impatiently looking forward to seeing and speaking with my students.

Life is an everyday battle. Hardships never end; it is we who choose whether to grow stronger or surrender. In the midst of all the hardship, finding hope is what helps us survive. The holidays had finished, and I was waiting to meet my new students and speak with my previous ones.

But I received a message that I could no longer hold my classes, due to a funding issue.

I can’t explain how sad I was at that moment. Thousands of negative thoughts and feelings covered me and my mind. And every other struggle I had was growing bigger and bigger, until I began to feel I would never get out of them.

I thought about my students — will I never speak to them again? Will I lose them? What else meaningful can I offer my people and country right now?

I also remembered that I no longer have the financial support I had for my classes, which added to my worries. I don’t have an alternative opportunity to immediately replace it with. So I realized that things have changed, and it is not like the past.

It was in that moment that I truly felt the pain of the closure of schools for girls. I understood the impact of this ban on the thousands of female teachers who lost their jobs and income five years ago.

Hours later, still sad and worried, I realized that this is not about me, or a personal issue. I will find a new job and income; I can find another class and new students and keep educating women in this time. But what about all those women and girls who are losing the opportunity to learn in these online and hidden classes, which are closing because of funding shortages?

It carries an alarming and heartbreaking message: the international community is losing interest in the situation of women and girls, and in their fate under Taliban rule.

The ban on secondary schools for female students is entering its fifth year, and it has been 1,199 days since university doors closed to female students.

After four or five years, if the international community and world governments cannot remain hopeful and support education for women and girls in Afghanistan, how are we expected to cope?

A week before the new year, I had a conversation with a group of brave women who have been holding hidden classes in their houses to keep alive the torch of education, despite all these restrictions, fears, and dangers.

Nahid, a teacher, told me that her students had lost all hope. “In the past years, at this time, my students were hopeful that schools would be reopened to them. But now, after several years, they are convinced that as long as the Taliban are ruling, they will never have the opportunity to study.”

Nahid added that her students hope that after they finish their school grades, she will give them a certificate showing they studied all those years — something that could help them gain recognition, or possibly a job, in the future.

Nahid herself was one of the female students who couldn’t continue her education at university, and she was not able to obtain her university diploma. She said she has been looking for a job to earn an income and support her family. But everywhere she goes, employers ask her for her university diploma, and she cannot get the job. Women are restricted from studying at university — if they cannot finish their studies, how can they get their diplomas?

Roya, another woman who also runs a hidden class, said that the families of the students see no future in their education. For that reason, the majority of her students are now engaged or married, and they have left her class.

Yesterday I spoke with Farida, another woman whose class was also closed. She said she is deeply sad, worried, and desperate. “I have no more hope, because I saw how the only and last hope of my students was gone.” She said that when she told her students the class was closing, they were crying as if at a funeral. “I will lose the online university and classes that I was studying in.” The closure of her class has a financial impact too — she can no longer afford her own online classes. She said she feels like someone in deep depression.

Sadly, these situations are common among so many other women who have run hidden classes. These classes might not be like actual schools, they might not issue graduation certificates, and they might be insufficient in covering all school subjects — but they have been a great beacon of hope and a lifeline for many students. They are the only place girls can go to learn something, where they can hold on to the knowledge they gained in school and prepare for the day they can use it.

Different US presidents have disparaged Afghanistan in different ways. Donald Trump called it a “hellhole” and worse; Joe Biden dismissed it as a “godforsaken place.” In this situation, questions come to my mind: are these the personal opinions of those presidents alone? Are they saying it about all the people of Afghanistan, including innocent civilians, women, and girls? Do all the world’s governments and countries agree with those words? Is Afghanistan really such a place?

If it is not, why is the international community behaving this way toward Afghanistan? For five years now, Afghanistan has remained the only country in the world where girls cannot go to school. Why does no one have any solution? We women have been doing everything in our power to keep going — why do those countries with power do nothing?

They not only fail to reopen the doors of schools and universities for women and girls — they also join the Taliban in abandoning women and girls, by restricting education visas for students, or cutting the aid and funds that support education for women and girls. Afghanistan was never a “hellhole” or a “godforsaken” place. If it has become one in recent decades, it is because the international community has allowed it.

This is not just about the closing of my online classes. This is another way of silencing the voices of thousands of girls and young women who, in the darkness, are still thirsting for knowledge. As a teacher, I believe that education is the only true way to save Afghanistan’s people, now and in the future.

If the international community truly believes in women’s rights and justice, it is no longer the time to talk and watch. It is time to act: to support the underground classes, to pressure the Taliban to reopen schools and universities, and to prevent the cutting of aid that keeps hope alive for women and girls.

We, the women of Afghanistan, have not given up, and we will not give up. Even in the most difficult circumstances, we have kept the torch of knowledge burning with our own hands. Now it is your turn to decide: will you let this torch go out, or will you join in keeping it burning?