How a new generation of educated girls defied the Taliban
When the Taliban reached Parveen Tokhi’s home province of Zabul in mid-August and asked to use her school as a temporary barracks, the headteacher was frightened but clear about what she had to do.
She spent the bleak years of the first Taliban government in the 1990s stuck at home like almost all Afghan women, barred from education and work. She was determined that the same shadow wouldn’t engulf another generation.
“I said: ‘OK, you can stay there overnight, but these buildings are a girls’ school, and I have sacrificed all my life for the education of these girls.’” The men had to be out in time for morning classes to start as usual at Bibi Khala school the next day, she
