I lived through the first Taliban girls’ school ban — watching it happen again is heartbreaking

In August 2021, the Taliban recaptured Kabul and, within weeks, barred girls from attending school beyond Grade 6.

The ban has not lifted.

Afghanistan remains the only country in the world that formally bars girls and women from secondary and higher education .

In the years since, Afghan women have also been banned from working across most sectors that once employed them , from the civil service to national and international aid organizations.

About 2.2 million adolescent girls have been barred from secondary school for nearly 1,800 days .

A 2026 UNICEF analysis projects Afghanistan will lose up to 20,000 women teachers and 5,400 health-care workers by 2030, with the restrictions already costing the country an estimated $84 million US a year.

Since September 2025, Taliban forces have also barred Afghan women, including United Nations staff, from entering UN offices .

In January 2026, women civil servants lost even the reduced pay they had received since 2021 for staying home .

I watched a version of this happen once before, as a young girl in 1996, the last time the Taliban took Kabul.

What strikes me most about this second ban isn’t that it happened again.

It’s that the world’s failure this time isn’t due to a lack of awareness.

Everyone knows what’s happening to Afghan girls.

The failure is that knowing has not carried any real cost for the Taliban.

What Afghan women have built Within days of the takeover, Afghan women were in the streets of Kabul chanting “Bread, Work, Freedom,” a demand they have kept making since, at real personal risk.