Afghan girls struggle with poor internet as they turn to online classes
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[March 27, 2023]
By Charlotte Greenfield and Mohammad Yunus Yawar
KABUL (Reuters) - Sofia logs in to class on a laptop in Kabul for an
online English course run by one of a growing number of educational
institutes trying to reach Afghanistan's girls and women digitally in
their homes.
But when the teacher calls on Sofia to read a passage her computer
screen freezes.
"Can you hear me?" she asks repeatedly, checking her connection.
After a while, her computer stutters back to life.
"As usual," a fellow student equally frustrated with the poor
communications sighs as the class gets going again.
Sofia, 22, is one of a growing stream of Afghan girls and women going
online as a last resort to get around the Taliban administration's
restrictions on studying and working.
Taliban officials, citing what they call problems including issues
related to Islamic dress, have closed girls' highschools, barred their
access to universities and stopped most women from working at
non-governmental organisations.
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One of the most striking changes since the Taliban were first in power
from 1996 to 2001, is the explosion of the internet.
Virtually no one had access to the internet when the Taliban were forced
from power in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States.
After nearly two decades of Western-led intervention and engagement with
the world, 18% of the population had internet access, according to the
World Bank.
The Taliban administration has allowed girls to study individually at
home and has not moved to ban the internet, which its officials use to
make announcements via social media.
But girls and women face a host of problems from power cuts, to
cripplingly slow internet speeds, let alone the cost of computers and
wifi in a country where 97% of people live in poverty.
"For girls in Afghanistan, we have a bad, awful internet problem," Sofia
said.
Her online school, Rumi Academy, saw its enrolment of mostly females
rise from about 50 students to more than 500 after the Taliban took over
in 2021.
It has had hundreds more applications but cannot enrol them for now
because of a lack of funds for teachers and to pay for equipment and
internet packages, a representative of the academy said.
'TOO HARD'
Sakina Nazari tried a virtual language class at her home in the west of
Kabul for a week after she was forced to leave her university in
December. But she abandoned it in frustration after battling the
problems.
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![](../images/032723PIX/news_h88.jpg)
Sofia, an Afghan student, speaks English
during an online class, at her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, March
18, 2023. REUTERS/Sayed Hassib
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"I couldn't continue," she said. "It's too hard to access internet
in Afghanistan and sometimes we have half an hour of power in 24
hours."
Seattle-based Ookla, which compiles global internet speeds, put
Afghanistan's mobile internet as the slowest of 137 countries and
its fixed internet as the second slowest of 180 countries.
Some Afghans have started calling on SpaceX Chief Executive Elon
Musk to introduce its satellite internet service Starlink to
Afghanistan, as it has done in Ukraine and Iran, posting requests
for help on Twitter, which he owns.
"We also call on Elon Musk to help us," Sofia said.
"If they would be able to (introduce) that in Afghanistan, it would
be very, very impactful for women."
SpaceX spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Online schools are trying their best to accommodate Afghanistan's
pupils.
Daniel Kalmanson, spokesperson for online University of the People,
which has had more than 15,000 applications from Afghan girls and
women since the Taliban took over, said students could attend
lectures at any time that conditions allowed them to, and professors
granted extensions for assignments and exams when students faced
connection problems.
The non-profit group Learn Afghanistan, which runs several
community-based schools in which some teachers run classes remotely,
makes its curriculum available for free in Afghanistan's main
languages.
Executive director Pashtana Durrani said the group also ensured that
lessons were available via radio, which is widely used in rural
areas. She was working with international companies to find
solutions to poor internet access but said she could not elaborate.
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"Afghanistan needs to be a country where the internet is accessible,
digital devices need to be pumped in," Durrani said.
Sofia said Afghan women had grown used to problems over years of war
and they would persevere no matter what.
"We still have dreams and we will not give up, ever."
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Mohammad Yunus Yawar;
Additional reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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