Voices for Afghanistan

Student, Teacher + Leadership Profiles, Cultural Observations and Thoughts on Synchronous Underground Education

May, 2026. Welcome to Afghanistan Female Student Outreach's bi-monthly online newsletter dedicated to the students and academics who help Afghan women to continue their educations.

Five years ago when the Taliban regained power over a country in Central Asia the size

of Texas, its De Facto Authorities (DfA) codified an edict into law which prohibits girls and women, aged 12 and older to learn in schools and universities.

Millions of Women without Higher Education*

Russia is the only country in the international community that recognizes the current Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as legitimate. The U.S. designates the Taliban a global terrorist organization, supported by Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Networks.

Their current interpretation of Shariah law includes severe curtailment of women's rights to education, work and marriage.

In 2021, women already enrolled in accredited higher education institutions were disbarred from continuing their studies in Dari/Farsi or Pashto. The DfA regards this a pro active measure intended to protect them and to "prevent vice and propagate virtue".

These "Morality Laws" are worsening despite the exclusion of women from the workplace costing Afghanistan an estimated $920 million (2024-26).** Last year, women's actual voices were deemed awrah and cannot be heard in public. Whether living in cities or in rural areas, women must be fully shrouded from head to toe and with faces and hair fully covered with a hijab. They must also not leave their homes to work, run errands or meet friends unaccompanied by a mahram.

Credit: Omer Abrar/Getty Images UK

Underground Synchronous Education

The universally recognized human right violation of prohibiting education was answered by groups like AFSO leveraging the power of the Internet. Online technologies like video conferencing are now the central conduit for underground education - long recognized in dark chapters of history as a central form of non violent resistance.

Founded in Hartford, Connecticut by a group of volunteer Professors, AFSO is different from most of the humanitarian organizations providing education to Afghan women.

With limited resources and real time, synchronous learning, AFSO's growing network of human Professors and teaching assistants help college aged women retain their sanity, continue their studies and in a growing number of cases, emigrate to accredited brick and mortar universities.

Isolated, shut in students - at great risk and unfathomable peril - log on at class time to see a smiling human face on the other side of the world.

For more information on supporting AFSO 501 (c) 3 programs through donor advised funds, please contact Khushbu Srivastava, AFSO Director of Development.

Ridgefield, CT

5/6/26

*World Health Organization population survey estimates that there are an estimated three to four million Afghan women aged 18-24, 2022

**UN Women Report, 2025

Disclaimer: Afghan Female Student Outreach is a non partisan, non profit 501 (c) 3 registered in Connecticut, U.S.A. It assists Afghan women to continue learning in real time. AFSO does not endorse, finance or lend its name to any issue outside of this mission.