{"id":887,"date":"2026-09-06T23:36:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T23:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=887"},"modified":"2026-09-06T23:36:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T23:36:23","slug":"inside-afghanistans-terror-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=887","title":{"rendered":"Inside Afghanistan’s terror schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A few months ago, Manizha\u2019s eight-year-old son came to her with a question. \u201cWhat,\u201d he asked, \u201cis jihad?\u201d His words left Manizha speechless \u2014 especially when the former Kabul office worker heard what came next. \u201cHe wanted to know how he could fight the enemy,\u201d the boy\u2019s mother explains, the disbelief still echoed in her voice. She sat there stunned, unable to reply.<\/p>\n

Read more The next financial crash: a scenario<\/a><\/p>\n

Five years on from the Taliban\u2019s return, and life for Afghan women like Manizha has become a kind of hell. Banned from schools, universities and even parks, they need a \u201cmale guardian\u201d to travel more than 70 kilometers from home. And now, the mother of three fears for her children\u2019s future too. Taught that unbelievers should be killed, and that women\u2019s rights are mere Western propaganda, young Afghans are being groomed to become the extremists of tomorrow \u2014 with worrying implications for their country and the world.<\/p>\n

Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban has become infamous for its restrictions on female education, locking over two million girls from the classroom. But that still leaves millions of boys, and millions more girls under 14, in the regime\u2019s pedagogical clutches. Certainly, it\u2019s clear that the Taliban itself understands its power here. As far back as 2022, a 78-page leaked document outlined a raft of changes to what was dismissively called the \u201cmodern curriculum\u201d. Instead, the document argued, schooling should be transformed in line with the Taliban\u2019s radical interpretation of Islamic law, suggesting, among other things, that natural disasters should be explained both scientifically \u2014 and in terms of \u201cAllah\u2019s will and power\u201d.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the theory, the practice is equally grim. \u201cThey asked schools not to teach some parts of certain books to the students,\u201d explains one anonymous educator. \u201cThey\u2019ve also removed subjects such as civic education, life skills and a subject about loving the homeland.\u201d In its place, the teacher adds, schools now hold classes on the Quran, with textbooks reviewed by UnHerd<\/em> exhorting battle against \u201cinvaders\u201d and \u201capostates\u201d. Other subjects, including English and biology, are no longer covered for lack of teachers, unsurprising when the Taliban has banned thousands of female staff.<\/p>\n

Not that the curriculum is the only thing to change. Boys, after all, are now expected to wear a beard \u2014 or at least try to \u2014 while girls as young as six now attend class in the burka. That, in turn, reflects the spread of out-and-out madrasas, the religious schools common across the Islamic world. According to by the Hamrah Network, a cohort of Afghan organizations, there were 23,000 such schools in Afghanistan last year, up from just 5,000 in 2023, with some 3.65 million Afghans now enrolled in madrasas or Islamic seminaries.<\/p>\n

The Taliban has achieved this growth by operating what the Hamrah Network calls a \u201cfranchise model\u201d \u2014 whereby private madrasas are nationalized in return for government salaries and a formal certification. With the Afghan economy in a state of near collapse, it\u2019s little wonder that everything from broadcast facilities to guest houses have taken up the offer. One notable example is the Abdul Hai Habibi High School in the east of the country. Once among the most progressive institutions in Afghanistan, it became a madrasa in 2022, displacing 6,000 students and 130 teachers.<\/p>\n

If anything, meanwhile, Afghanistan\u2019s burgeoning madrasa system is even more extreme than regular schools. Framed around the hardline Deobandi movement \u2014 a revivalist form of Islam founded in India \u2014 it brings extremism to the heart of every classroom. Manizha has witnessed this firsthand, and not only in her son: her young daughter has been taught about marrying a jihadi fighter. \u201cWhat place does jihad have in the 21st century?\u201d the girl\u2019s mother asks. \u201cWhy does a 10-year-old need to know about participating in the war or killing people? How do you expect a kid to have a bright future if all they are being taught is killing and bloodshed?\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all good questions \u2014 with a depressingly plausible answer. Experts speculate that reshaping young minds is the very reason the Taliban are consolidating their control over Afghan schools. In this, the militants have history, shadowing other Islamist insurgencies in recruiting almost exclusively from religious institutions. More than that, the emirate continues to maintain a militant insurgent group, complete with suicide bombers on call, with the madrasas ensuring a steady stream of brainwashed recruits.<\/p>\n

If this obviously has domestic implications \u2014 Dr Timor Sharan, co-founder of the Hamrah Network, suggests it deepens the subordination of women and girls across Afghan society \u2014 this matters beyond the country\u2019s borders too. After all, the Taliban continues to support terror groups across the region. That includes the remnants of al-Qaeda, which has been blamed for a number of recent atrocities in India and Pakistan, as well as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which wages war on Islamabad from bases inside Afghanistan. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a Uyghur group battling China, also enjoys training grounds in the emirate.<\/p>\n

Read more Reform\u2019s struggle to be serious<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet whatever the geopolitical implications here, it\u2019s hard not to return to the plight of Afghanistan\u2019s children, with parents suggesting that the steady drumbeat of extremist content is affecting the younger generation\u2019s mental health. \u201cThe way the teachers behave with the students, my children now dislike going to school,\u201d Manizha says. \u201cEspecially my older son, who has experienced schooling in better days.\u201d Other evidence supports this claim: the student dropout rate, even among boys, is rising, perhaps also a symptom of the rise in corporal punishment since 2021.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019d be wrong to suggest that the Taliban invented these schools wholesale. Afghanistan was a deeply conservative country long before they returned. All the same, locals suggest one key difference, in that regressive ideas are now lauded by the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funny thing is I grew up in a community where we already experienced having that one family member, an uncle who was a little too conservative, who would get mad if women in the family went out or they wore clothes he considered inappropriate,\u201d explains Pashtana Durrani, founder of Learn Afghanistan, which runs underground classes for girls banned from school. \u201cWe know that type in all South Asian communities\u201d.<\/p>\n

But now, Durrani suggests, these attitudes are \u201ccelebrated\u201d in public \u2014 even as they\u2019re seeping into formerly liberal, urban areas too. Given the already-shocking rates of gender violence in Afghanistan, this could have disastrous consequences, as whole new cohorts of boys grow up thinking that women are there to submit.<\/p>\n

There are, to be sure, glimmers of hope, and Durrani\u2019s Learn Afghanistan project is one. Operating covertly, it follows the pre-2021 curriculum, educating some 400 students in everything from history and geography to robotics, AI and even feminist literature. At one point, Durrani\u2019s team held discreet lessons in person, but Taliban crackdowns forced them to go almost entirely online. It\u2019s a move that poses problems all its own, obliging Learn Afghanistan to invest in new laptops, and the solar-powered batteries to run them during power cuts.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s better than nothing \u2014 but hardly enough to stem the extremist tide. Indeed, though Manizha says her family tried to complain about her children\u2019s curriculum, they were dismissed out of hand. \u201cWe can\u2019t raise our voice because we know the outcome could hurt the kids and also the family members within the community,\u201d she says, adding that she works to counter the Taliban\u2019s educational extremism once her children return home every evening.<\/p>\n

That might explain Manizha\u2019s remarkable optimism in light of everything that\u2019s happened. \u201cWe are Muslim,\u201d she says, \u201cand we will be Muslim with or without the Taliban, and are capable of teaching our kids about Islam. Everything comes to an end eventually. People won\u2019t always tolerate this form of extremism.\u201d Perhaps \u2014 but, for the moment, the Taliban and their madrasas remain.<\/p>\n

Read more 9\/11 could happen again<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months ago, Manizha\u2019s eight-year-old son came to her with a question. \u201cWhat,\u201d he asked, \u201cis jihad?\u201d His words left Manizha speechless \u2014 especially when the former Kabul office worker heard what came next. \u201cHe wanted to know how he could fight the enemy,\u201d the boy\u2019s mother explains, the disbelief still echoed in her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-extremism"],"yoast_head":"\nInside Afghanistan's terror schools - \u0421ity Flow Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=887\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside Afghanistan's terror schools - 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