Eight-year-old Halima was devastated to learn that after overcoming numerous obstacles to her education under Taliban rule, her path to learning had been blocked with the closure of her private school.
"We all went home crying," she told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi of the day she and her fellow students learned that their classes in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar Province had been terminated.
"Our schools were closed first by the coronavirus [pandemic], then there was fighting, and now they have been shut again," she said. "We just want to study."
The rural classroom where she studied was a lifeline for learning basic mathematics, Afghan languages, science, and Islamic studies despite the ruling Taliban's efforts to restrict girls' and women's access to education.
But on April 16, classes ended when the hardline Islamist authorities announced that the school, among Afghanistan's thousands of Community-Based Education (CBE) centers, would be closed following unspecified "complaints from locals."
Unrest and poverty in Kandahar and neighboring Helmand Province made the two regions a focal point for the development of CBE centers over the past three decades, with funding coming primarily from Western donors via the United Nations and international nongovernmental organizations.
Countrywide, more than 500,000 Afghan children currently attend CBE centers, which were established in cooperation with the communities in which they were based and are often held in private homes, mosques, or large tents.
Aid groups pay teachers' salaries, provide educational materials, and offer the same curriculum taught in Afghan state schools. The centers, typically made up of a single classroom catering for up to 50 students, half of them girls, also filled an education void in remote areas where there were no state schools.
But since mid-April, nearly 1,600 CBE centers in Kandahar Province have been closed, depriving 50,000 students of an education. Similar numbers have been recorded in neighboring Helmand Province in a nationwide trend.
'It's Heartbreaking'
The termination of classes at Halima's school and others like it appears to show that the narrow window for learning in remote areas is being closed as the Taliban looks to impose full control over how children are educated.
Munir Ahmad, who ran a literacy class inside his mudbrick home in Dand, a rural district in Kandahar Province, said he was forced to close his doors to students in April.
"It is heartbreaking to lose these classes because they serve children in remote areas where there are no other education opportunities," he told Radio Azadi.
The Taliban, approaching two years in power, has not commented on whether it has ordered the school closures. But aid workers, rights campaigners, and education experts suggest that the hardline group is trying to ensure that young students receive an Islamic education even though the CBE centers follow the state model.
This, in turn, has led to concerns that the Taliban either intends to permanently shut down the schools or use them as venues to spread its extremist worldview and ideology.
A tent donated by UNICEF served as a venue for an informal literacy class in rural Kandahar.
"It is alarming," said Heather Barr, associate director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch. "The Taliban will likely change these schools in a way that is harmful to students, particularly girls."
Education has been a main target of the Taliban's extremist policies since it seized power in August 2021 and took steps to root out secular education.
Teenage girls were promptly banned from attending school despite the Taliban's promises to the international community, which has listed the Taliban's stance on girls' and women's education as a key obstacle to officially recognizing its government.
'Jihadi Madrasahs'
Since taking power, the Taliban has consistently enforced strict gender segregation and replaced professional educators with clerics.
Last year, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada appointed key loyalists Mawlawi Habibullah Agha and Nida Mohmmad Nadim to lead the education and higher education ministries, respectively.
SEE ALSO: The Taliban Higher Education Minister Who Is Against Female EducationThe two have diligently worked to expand the ban on women’s education and attempted to turn schools into a tool for indoctrination by tweaking the curriculum, critics say. In some cases, modern schools have been converted into madrasahs.
In December, the Taliban upped the ante by prohibiting women from receiving a university education.
And in the latest move, a Taliban official said this month that its government had established "jihadi madrasahs" in at least five provinces. Many Islamist militant groups, including the Taliban, emerged from such religious schools in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan in the 1980s.
Wazhma Tokhi, an Afghan human rights activist with a particular focus on women's rights and education in Afghanistan, suggests that the recent school closures can be seen as another example of the group’s determination to root out secular education.
"They want to turn the schools into madrasahs," Tokhi said.
The UN agency for children, UNICEF, which funds many CBE centers, says it is now holding discussions with the Taliban over "timelines and practicalities" for possibly handing them over to Afghan NGOs, many of which receive outside funding and have some protection from the Taliban.
Tokhi sees disastrous consequences if the Taliban assumes direct control over CBE centers.
"Our future is destroyed," she said.