After 5-Year Ban, Female Students Again Allowed to Register at Kabul U. By MARTHA ANN OVERLAND
Islamabad, Pakistan
After a five-year-long wait, the doors of Kabul University have once again opened to women. Last Saturday, dozens of anxious but eager female students, who had been barred from going to college by the Taliban regime, lined up to register for the next academic session.
"I don't know about the future. We are not certain what it will bring," a beaming Farida Avzali told Agence France-Presse as she waited to be called by the admissions committee. "But today is an important day for Afghanistan that women can at least return to the university."
Most of the women who came to register for classes wore the all-encompassing burqa and were escorted by their fathers or other male relatives. But once inside the interview room, many of the prospective students removed their veils. After living behind closed doors for so long, it was intimidating to find themselves seated before the all-male committee of six professors. Some of the women had to be prodded to speak for themselves. Under the old Taliban rule, women caught speaking or "mixing" with men who were not close relatives would have been severely punished.
"I think, this is not Afghanistan; it is like we are dreaming after the last five years," Zohra Rahimi, a former medical student, said. "I spent every day cooking, cleaning, and doing housework. I was bored and depressed. It was five lost years of my life."
Most of those who appeared for last week's interviews were women whose academic careers were derailed when the Taliban regime came to power in 1996. When the next session begins, on March 21, women will be able to pick up their studies where they left off, said M. Daud Rawash, a former professor of philosophy at Kabul University who was forced to flee in 1998.
"Kabul University was always coeducational," said Mr. Rawash, who is eagerly preparing to return to his former job. Before the Taliban government came to power, 60 percent of the students and faculty members at Kabul University were women.
While there is great symbolic value in the fact that women are being allowed back into the university, the campus itself is in shambles. During the struggle for control over Kabul in the 1990s, running battles between the factions that now make up the Northern Alliance took place on the campus. Buildings were bombed; libraries and labs were ransacked.