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CNN Live Sunday

Afghan Women Flee to Pakistan

Aired November 11, 2001 - 17:26   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: The bombing campaign in Afghanistan is designed not only to destroy those responsible for the terror attack, but also to dismantle the government which has stripped many Afghans, especially women, of their rights and liberties.

CNN's Amanda Kibel tells us that the situation became so dire, that many women felt they had to leave.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANDA KIBEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nine months ago, these young women left their homes and families in Afghanistan to come to Pakistan. But unlike so many other Afghan refugees, they fled not from fear of death, but from fear of ignorance. In 1998, the Taliban captured their village in Afghanistan's southeastern province of Glasny (ph). One of the first things the Taliban did, they say, was shut down all the girls schools.

After 11 years of studying, 21-year-old Laylo (ph) had just one more year to finish her basic education. So she and 10 of her classmates took their education underground.

"The Taliban didn't know that I was getting an education," she says. "I was studying at home. One of my teachers came to my house and taught me there." Continuing her education, says Laylo (ph), was a dangerous decision.

"I was very afraid of the Taliban," she says, "because if they had found our home school or the teacher or any of the students, they would have closed the school immediately. They would have taken our teacher and even arrested our families." But after basic schooling, there is nowhere for an Afghan girl to go if she wants more education. There are no colleges and no universities for women. The only choice is to leave Afghanistan.

And it's here at the Institute of Sciences in Quetta that Laylo (ph), Faria, and Fanzana have found a way to carry on learning. The college was started two years ago by Shahada, a Pakistan-based charity for Afghans both inside and outside their country.

(on camera): Despite edicts from the Taliban closing secular schools, particularly girl schools, the Shahada organization has managed to keep about 45 of those open and is educating some 45,000 people inside Afghanistan. (voice-over): The Institute of Science is Shahada's only higher education project. 20-year-old Minera, a student at the college, has been in Pakistan for seven years.

MINERA: If I were in Afghanistan, so my life with also were dark with the other women, like the other women who are living now in Afghanistan.

KIBEL: Dark, she says, like a 22-year-old cousin who stayed behind in Afghanistan.

MINERA: She's a girl but she's wearing the boy dress. And also, she's going to college there. And no one can recognize her as a girl.

KIBEL: Minera says by comparison her life in Pakistan is ordinary. But then for women like Minera, just being ordinary is sometimes the most extraordinary achievement of all.

Amanda Kibel, CNN, Quetta, Pakistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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