UrddFor many individuals within the UK this week, college has began once more.
However for girls and ladies in Afghanistan, there’s nonetheless a ban from secondary college lecture rooms, and far of public life, by the Taliban.
Mah, 22, fled from the nation in August 2021 when the group swept into the capital Kabul.
She is now getting an schooling within the UK, beginning a GCSE in English this week and he or she tells BBC Newsbeat: “I’m pleased for myself. I’m secure. I’ve freedom. I’m free.”
“However on the similar time, my pals in Afghanistan can’t do something,” she provides.
Within the three years for the reason that Taliban took management, restrictions on women’s lives have elevated.
Ladies and ladies over 12 are banned from colleges, and prevented from sitting most college entrance exams. There are additionally restrictions within the work they will do, with magnificence salons being closed, in addition to being not with the ability to go to parks, gyms and sport golf equipment.
“I don’t put my image on [Whatsapp or Instagram] tales after I’m pleased, after I exit with pals or after I’m in faculty,” Mah says.
“As a result of I don’t need my pals [back home] to really feel like: ‘Oh she’s within the UK 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 exhausting for me as a result of I can go to varsity right here and I can go to work.
“However on the similar time, again house, my pals who’re the identical age, cannot depart the home.”
The Taliban has stated its ban is down to spiritual points.
They’ve repeatedly promised girls can be readmitted as soon as the problems have been sorted – together with ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic”.
However, there has since been no motion on the ban, and Afghanistan is the one nation with such restrictions.
UrddMah’s journey to schooling in Cardiff was removed from simple.
Throughout the Taliban takeover, she says she fled from Helmand Province to Kandahar after which to Kabul. She awakened in the midst of the evening, three days after arriving within the capital metropolis, to search out the Taliban on her road.
“If I stayed in Afghanistan, perhaps they might kill me, perhaps they might marry me.
“I known as my mum and stated ‘Mum, I’m going.’ She stated, ‘the place are you going?’
“I stated, ‘I don’t know’.”
Mah ultimately arrived within the UK, together with different refugees who have been being welcomed into the nation.
“We got here with out something. I didn’t say [a proper] goodbye to my mum. I didn’t even hug her. I’ll always remember this.
“It’s not secure now, however Afghanistan is the place I grew up and, went to highschool. I can’t neglect the nation, and I miss all the pieces about it.”
Getty PhotosMah obtained help from one of many largest youth organisations, the Urdd, who have been offering assist in the Welsh capital.
Its chief government, Sian Lewis, says some individuals who fled to Wales and obtained an schooling are bilingual in Welsh now.
“They have been educated right here within the Urdd to start out off with and a quantity went to stay in several components of Wales.
“It’s opened so many doorways for them,” she says.
When Mah got here to the UK, she wasn’t capable of converse English.
“It was so exhausting. I didn’t know anyone. The whole lot was new.”
However three years on, Mah has spoken to BBC Newsbeat in an English interview which lasted over 20 minutes, and can be studying Welsh.
“Folks right here ought to say ‘thank God’ on a regular basis.
“Ladies have rights. Folks right here have no matter they need open to them, and they’re secure. They need to be pleased. They’re so fortunate.”
AqdasOne other one who has left Afghanistan is 17-year-old Aqdas.
She’s now within the US with a totally funded scholarship to a school in New Mexico, greater than 12,000 miles away from her house.
She recollects the day the Taliban took Kabul.
“I keep in mind that I didn’t know what to do any extra.
“Will they take my rights away? Will I expertise violence similar to my mom did 20 years in the past?
“I observed that my mum was crying and he or she positioned her hand on my shoulder, telling me that, she could not proceed her schooling due to the Taliban.”
However she informed Aqdas that she should not “let the Taliban or your limitations write the scripts in your life”.
After that, Aqdas continued schooling on-line, in secret, with the assistance of the Herat online school.
“I by no means gave up on my learning. Whether or not it was on-line or discovering one other strategy to proceed.”
AqdasIt was an extended, and infrequently chaotic, journey for her as effectively. When she acquired her scholarship to the USA, she needed to get a visa however the embassy was shut in Afghanistan.
She says she then went to Pakistan together with her father, utilizing a medical visa as a result of as a feminine, she didn’t have permission to depart the nation.
Aqdas has now began lessons however says there are different issues which can be usually ignored in Afghanistan.
“A number of folks suppose the one drawback in Afghanistan is simply the ladies’ schooling. There are different points like psychological well being.
“Women in Afghanistan are going by despair and anxiousness day by day and there’s no assist.”
The UK Authorities has informed BBC Newsbeat that it strongly condemns the ban on girls heading to the classroom and college, and that it urgently calls on the Taliban to “reverse these selections and to guard Afghan ladies’ rights”.
Newsbeat has approached the Taliban to touch upon considerations that ladies and ladies are banned from schooling – however have obtained nothing again.
