UrddFor many of us in the United Kingdom this week, college has began once more.
However for girls and women in Afghanistan, there’s nonetheless a ban from secondary college school rooms, and far of public lifestyles, via the Taliban.
Mah, 22, fled from the rustic in August 2021 when the gang swept into the capital Kabul.
She is now getting an schooling in the United Kingdom, beginning a GCSE in English this week and he or she tells BBC Newsbeat: “I’m glad for myself. I’m secure. I’ve freedom. I’m unfastened.”
“However on the identical time, my buddies in Afghanistan can’t do the rest,” she provides.
Within the 3 years for the reason that Taliban took keep watch over, restrictions on girls’s lives have larger.
Girls and women over 12 are banned from faculties, and averted from sitting maximum college front assessments. There also are restrictions within the paintings they may be able to do, with good looks salons being closed, in addition to being now not having the ability to cross to parks, gyms and recreation golf equipment.
“I don’t put my image on [Whatsapp or Instagram] tales after I’m glad, after I cross out with buddies or after I’m in faculty,” Mah says.
“As a result of I don’t need my buddies [back home] to really feel like: ‘Oh she’s in the United Kingdom now – she has freedom’.”
Mah, who’s in Cardiff, hopes a GCSE in English is the begin to ultimately turning into a midwife in Wales.
“It’s onerous for me as a result of I will cross to university right here and I will cross to paintings.
“However on the identical time, again house, my buddies who’re the similar age, can not depart the home.”
The Taliban has mentioned its ban is down to spiritual problems.
They’ve many times promised girls can be readmitted as soon as the problems have been taken care of – together with ensuring the curriculum was once “Islamic”.
However, there has since been no motion at the ban, and Afghanistan is the one nation with such restrictions.
UrddMah’s adventure to schooling in Cardiff was once a long way from simple.
All over the Taliban takeover, she says she fled from Helmand Province to Kandahar after which to Kabul. She awoke in the midst of the night time, 3 days after arriving within the capital town, to search out the Taliban on her side road.
“If I stayed in Afghanistan, perhaps they might kill me, perhaps they might marry me.
“I known as my mum and mentioned ‘Mum, I’m going.’ She mentioned, ‘the place are you going?’
“I mentioned, ‘I don’t know’.”
Mah ultimately arrived in the United Kingdom, at the side of different refugees who have been being welcomed into the rustic.
“We got here with out the rest. I didn’t say [a proper] good-bye to my mum. I didn’t even hug her. I can by no means overlook this.
“It’s now not secure now, however Afghanistan is where I grew up and, went to university. I will’t overlook the rustic, and I omit the entirety about it.”
Getty PhotographsMah won improve from some of the greatest adolescence organisations, the Urdd, who have been offering lend a hand within the Welsh capital.
Its leader government, Sian Lewis, says some individuals who fled to Wales and won an schooling are bilingual in Welsh now.
“They have been trained right here within the Urdd to start out off with and a host went to reside in numerous portions of Wales.
“It’s opened such a lot of doorways for them,” she says.
When Mah got here to the United Kingdom, she wasn’t ready to talk English.
“It was once so onerous. I didn’t know any one. The whole thing was once new.”
However 3 years on, Mah has spoken to BBC Newsbeat in an English interview which lasted over 20 mins, and could also be finding out Welsh.
“Other folks right here will have to say ‘thank God’ on a regular basis.
“Girls have rights. Other folks right here have no matter they would like open to them, and they’re secure. They will have to be at liberty. They’re so fortunate.”
AqdasSomeone else who has left Afghanistan is 17-year-old Aqdas.
She’s now in america with an absolutely funded scholarship to a school in New Mexico, greater than 12,000 miles clear of her house.
She recollects the day the Taliban took Kabul.
“I remember the fact that I didn’t know what to do any longer.
“Will they take my rights away? Will I enjoy violence similar to my mom did twenty years in the past?
“I realized that my mum was once crying and he or she positioned her hand on my shoulder, telling me that, she could not proceed her schooling on account of the Taliban.”
However she instructed Aqdas that she mustn’t “let the Taliban or your obstacles write the scripts in your lifestyles”.
After that, Aqdas persisted schooling on-line, in secret, with the assistance of the Herat on-line college.
“I by no means gave up on my finding out. Whether or not it was once on-line or discovering in a different way to proceed.”
AqdasIt was once a protracted, and steadily chaotic, adventure for her as neatly. When she were given her scholarship to the United States, she needed to get a visa however the embassy was once close in Afghanistan.
She says she then went to Pakistan together with her father, the use of a clinical visa as a result of as a feminine, she didn’t have permission to depart the rustic.
Aqdas has now began categories however says there are different issues which might be steadily lost sight of in Afghanistan.
“A lot of people assume the one downside in Afghanistan is simply the ladies’ schooling. There are different problems like psychological well being.
“Women in Afghanistan are going thru melancholy and nervousness each day and there is not any lend a hand.”
The United Kingdom Executive has instructed BBC Newsbeat that it strongly condemns the ban on girls heading to the school room and college, and that it urgently calls at the Taliban to “opposite those selections and to offer protection to Afghan women’ rights”.
Newsbeat has approached the Taliban to touch upon considerations that girls and women are banned from schooling – however have won not anything again.
Pay attention to Newsbeat reside at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or concentrate again right here.
