Post #2839676

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3pgn48wnqo Alia - whose name we have changed for her safety - travelled hundreds of miles from her village to Kabul to escape marriage. The journey by taxi last year with her female cousin - covered from head to toe, only their eyes visible, as the rules decree - was an exceptional thing to do, and risky in Afghanistan, where at any moment they might be caught by the Taliban inspectors enforcing rules banning women travelling long distances without a male relative escorting them. But Alia, who is 19, and her cousin weren't stopped at any Taliban checkpoints, and made it to the capital. "I made up an excuse to my family saying I was coming here to meet my friends and former classmates. But that's not true. They are not here. The actual reason is that if I stayed in Daykundi, I would be forced to get married." Instead, she arrived in Kabul with a plan: she enrolled in an English language course. These short-term, narrowly-focused private courses - available only to those who can afford them - are, along with madrasas which focus on religious education, the only options for girls to learn past primary school in Afghanistan. But neither are close to being a substitute for formal schooling. It has now been almost five years since the Taliban stopped girls over 12 going to school, with various reasons given to explain why the ban is still in place. Years in which girls like Alia have grown up without the education they wanted and needed. Years in which the path to a career has been effectively shut off, narrowing their options until millions of girls in Afghanistan have been left with just one choice: marriage.