At 4:00 am in Mazar-i-Sharif, the city is still wrapped in darkness. Sixteen-year-old Behzad wakes before dawn, performs his morning prayers, folds away his prayer mat and prepares for school.
Today he has six subjects scheduled, but he places only three books in his bag because there are no teachers for half of the classes.
By 5:00am, Behzad has gone back to sleep.
When he wakes again at 7:30am, a simple breakfast is ready: dry bread, tea and sugar. He puts on the required school uniform, a traditional white tunic and cap, and heads towards school.
His 17-year-old sister Maryam stays home and clears the breakfast table. It has been 1,719 days since she was last allowed to attend school.
“No Cap & Traditional Cloth, No Entry”
Behzad’s school is officially open. Outside the gate, students stand in line waiting for permission to enter.
He is a seventh-grade pupil at Hazrat Noman High School in the Karte Khorasan area of Mazar-i-Sharif city and attends classes daily from 8:00am until noon.
In previous years, his official uniform consisted of a blue shirt and black trousers. But in the new academic year, beginning in March, the Taliban Education Ministry ordered that primary and middle-school boys wear white traditional clothing and caps, while high-school students must also wear turbans.
At the entrance stands the discipline officer, a male teacher with a turban, traditional clothing and a long beard, monitoring compliance with the rules, especially the dress code.
Behzad, dressed in the required white outfit and cap, is allowed inside. Students who fail to follow the dress code are denied entry and left standing outside the school gate.
The Absence of Female Teachers
The first lesson begins, but no teacher arrives. Students wander around the schoolyard; some lie across benches trying to catch up on sleep, others rest their heads on desks, while groups chat and play.
The shortage of teachers is one of the school’s biggest problems.
At Hazrat Noman School, seventh-grade classes have teachers for only four subjects. On days when three teachers attend, students describe it as a “busy day”, though even then at least three teaching hours pass without instruction.
After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, female teachers were removed from boys’ secondary schools, a decision students and staff say created a major gap in the education system. Nearly five years later, that gap remains unfilled.
Four and a half years ago, Farida Arefi was the headmistress of Hazrat Noman High School. After the changes, she was replaced by a cleric named Mawlawi Saifuddin.
Behzad says no female teachers now teach their classes. Many women teachers have either remained at home or been reassigned to primary schools.
Teacher by Morning, Driver by Afternoon
During the second lesson, a teacher finally enters the classroom, a middle-aged man with a dusty turban, long beard and traditional clothes more suited to manual labour than teaching. Students rise reluctantly. Some take books from their bags; others have brought none at all.
In one corner of the room, empty desks stand lined up, not only for absent students, but for a generation slowly drifting away from education.
Behzad says school discipline no longer resembles the past.
“Teachers are not motivated. Some older students disrespect teachers, and no one can stop them,” he says.
He points to a classroom that once held more than 40 pupils. Now attendance rarely exceeds 25. Many students, he says, no longer believe school can secure their future.
The shortages extend beyond students. Old wooden desks are covered with incomplete and second-hand textbooks. The school administration distributed only part of the required materials, forcing families to buy the rest from markets where black-and-white copies cost 40 afghanis and colour editions up to 100, in a country where many families struggle even to buy bread.
Lessons end sooner than the timetable suggests. Teachers read a few pages in a monotone voice, sign attendance registers and leave. For many, school is only part of the working day.
Behzad says he often wonders whether attending school is worth it. His father repeatedly tells him he could learn a labour work instead and help support the family.
Many teachers, he says, go directly to second jobs after classes end. Some work as labourers, some push handcarts, and others drive rickshaws through the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif city.
“Our teachers drive rickshaws in the afternoons,” he says.
In today’s Afghanistan, being a teacher no longer necessarily means teaching; sometimes it is simply the first shift in a long struggle for survival.
Erased Lessons
Behzad flips through his Dari (Persian) textbook and suddenly pauses. Several pages have been torn out. The missing sections are chapters no longer permitted to be taught.
In Afghanistan’s classrooms today, censorship is not only visible in words, but it can also be physically touched.
In mid 2025, the Taliban Education Ministry removed at least 51 topics from school curricula, including “women’s rights”, “human rights”, “Mother’s Day”, the Red Flower Festival, folk songs and sections about Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. Taliban officials said the material was incompatible with “religious teachings” and the “policies of the Islamic Emirate”.
As a result, some subjects have disappeared entirely, while others remain only as books with torn pages.
Behzad says they now study fewer subjects than before. Civic education, art and patriotism classes are no longer taught.
“Sometimes when we open the books, we realise several pages are simply missing,” he says.
Yet the greatest contradiction lies elsewhere.
Hazrat Noman High School is physically one of the city’s best-equipped schools, a newly built facility with computer labs, a library and renovated classrooms. The project began under the previous government with German support and was completed after the Taliban returned to power.
From the outside, it resembles a modern school.
Inside, however, students face incomplete textbooks, too few teachers and subjects stripped from the curriculum.
“The school building is very well equipped,” Behzad says quietly. “The facilities are good, but proper education does not exist.”
In Afghanistan today, the problem is not only the absence of schools. Sometimes schools exist, but education itself is missing.
“My Classmates No Longer Dream of University”
For previous generations of Afghan students, finishing secondary school usually came with a shared ambition: university entrance exams, higher education and perhaps a career that could transform their family’s future.
But Ahmad Ali says that dream is fading in Mazar-i-Sharif city.
The 18-year-old studies at Abdul Ali Mazari High School No. 2. When he speaks about the future, he sounds less like someone discussing a possibility and more like someone mourning something already lost.
“Before, when students reached Year 10, they enthusiastically enrolled in university preparation courses. We believed we would go to university, study our chosen subjects and eventually find jobs. But now that hope has become very faint.”
In Afghanistan today, university is no longer the natural continuation of school for many teenagers; it feels more like a distant privilege beyond reach.
The cost of entrance-exam courses, widespread poverty and the lack of employment prospects have forced many families to choose between education and survival.
Ahmad Ali now attends school only two days a week. On the remaining days, he works in a car repair workshop.
“I told the teachers I have to work so they don’t mark me absent,” he says.
Many classmates, he explains, also combine school with hard labour, some in markets, some in garages and others in daily wage jobs.
Four years ago, when Ahmad Ali was in Year 8, most teachers at his school were women.
“In our class we had 10 teachers and eight of them were women. Now none remain.”
Teacher shortages, he says, have become normal.
“Some days, out of six subjects only two or three teachers show up.”
Even specialist subjects are sometimes taught by unqualified staff.
“Last year we had no physics teacher until the end of the year. This year they appointed a cleric to teach physics, but he knows nothing about physics,” he says with a bitter laugh.
In such an environment, university is no longer the next destination for many students; it is an increasingly distant concept slowly disappearing from young minds.
“Today many students feel that even if they study, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever achieve their dreams,” Ahmad Ali says.
In a country where the younger generation once viewed education as the only path to salvation, perhaps the most dangerous change is the loss of belief in the future itself.
In October 2025, United Nations International Children Emergency Funds (UNICEF) reported that more than two million children in Afghanistan were out of school and that over 90 percent of 10-year-olds could not read simple texts. According to the agency, children are “going to school but not learning anything”.
UNICEF said the situation is the result of weak and restrictive Taliban education policies.
Private Schools Face Similar Problems
For 14-year-old Rawzatullah, moving from a public school to a private one was supposed to improve his education. Instead, he found more similarities than differences.
Until recently he attended Khorasan Township Public School in Kabul. Now he studies at a private school where his family hoped teaching standards would be better.
But his experience in both systems has been strikingly similar.
“We used to have more teachers, but now there are fewer. Many female teachers have either been transferred to girls’ primary schools or removed entirely,” he says.
The change is personal for him. His mother taught for years at the same public school but lost her job after changes to the education system. She now works at a private school.
“My mother used to teach there, but after the Taliban returned to power, she was no longer allowed to continue,” he says quietly.
His family moved him to a private school in search of better opportunities.
“My mother thought education might be better there, so she transferred me.”
Even so, he says the differences are limited.
“Private schools also have problems. The difference isn’t huge; there are only slightly more teachers and lessons are somewhat better organised.”
Both systems suffer from the same issue: a shortage of experienced teachers and qualified staff.
“When there aren’t enough teachers, naturally classes don’t receive proper attention. We feel this directly in our lessons,” he says.
Behind these changes lies a growing uncertainty about the future.
“Students no longer speak confidently about university and the future like they used to. Many don’t know what will happen after school.”
In late 2023, Human Rights Watch reported that while the Taliban faced international condemnation for restricting girls’ and women’s education, far less attention had been paid to the damage inflicted on boys’ education.
The organisation said the quality of boys’ schooling under Taliban rule had sharply deteriorated.
Human Rights Watch added that the Taliban barred female teachers from teaching boys and replaced them with “unqualified” male staff, negatively affecting educational standards.
The organisation also said punishment of boys in Afghan schools had increased under Taliban rule.
The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan has entered a dangerous new phase since late February, raising serious concerns about regional stability.
Pakistan has carried out multiple airstrikes in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia, Paktika and Nangarhar, while the Taliban have responded with ground assaults and drone attacks.
The United Nations said 143 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike on a drug treatment centre in Kabul, although the Taliban put the death toll at as many as 400.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, reported that from late February to the present, between 75 and 212 Afghan civilians have been killed, with hundreds more wounded.
A key question remains: if civilians are being hit, why is Pakistan not targeting the Taliban’s senior leadership?
What is Pakistan’s Calculated Approach to War?
Based on strategies previously used against leadership figures in Iran, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and al-Qaida, eliminating leaders in ideologically driven militant groups often leads to the rapid emergence of successors who may be even more radical and harder to contain.
Retired Pakistani General Inam-ul-Haq said Islamabad is not pursuing an all-out war against the Taliban, but is instead applying what he described as “calibrated” pressure. According to him, Pakistan is deliberately avoiding direct strikes on Taliban leaders and is not cutting ties with the ruling authorities. Instead, it is focusing on weapons depots, mid-level commanders and border posts in an effort to keep the Taliban under sustained pressure.
Haq said Pakistan does not want to cross a “red line” that could turn the conflict into a full-scale crisis.
He said one of Islamabad’s concerns is that killing senior Taliban leaders could create a power vacuum in Afghanistan, widen the conflict and further destabilise Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, making both provinces harder to control.
Pakistan’s assessment, he said, is that the Taliban do not have a well-organised replacement leadership, and that the loss of top figures could endanger the wider region. Foreign militant groups now operating under Taliban influence could expand their activities into China, Central Asia and Pakistan itself if the Taliban leadership were removed.
For that reason, one option for Islamabad is to seek co-operation from within the Taliban and among aligned groups.
Haq said Pakistan is also monitoring networks of influence inside the Taliban. Groups such as the Haqqani network are viewed as relatively close, while greater pressure is being applied to other factions that have more limited co-ordination with Pakistan. Most of the areas targeted in Pakistani airstrikes lie outside Haqqani Network’s influence, he said.
Local sources say many Taliban fighters deployed along the Durand Line are from Kandahar and aligned with Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, with little involvement from the Haqqani network. One reason, they say, is that Hibatullah has appointed many loyalists in districts in south-western Afghanistan to military and government posts.
Haq views this distribution of power within the Taliban as part of an “internal balance” policy that helps preserve the group’s structure.
Several Afghan analysts share a similar assessment, interpreting Pakistan’s decision to spare the Taliban leadership as a deliberate choice.
Military Analysts’ Perspective
Azim Rahimi, a former professor at Kabul University and an expert in military affairs, said targeting the Taliban leadership remains an option for Pakistan, but one that is neither used constantly nor immediately.
“Pakistan will only use this option when there is a ‘need’ and a ‘political and security calculation’,” he said. “At this time, Pakistan does not genuinely seek the fall of the Taliban regime, but is instead applying limited pressure.”
He added that regional experience from past wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that toppling a ruling system can create long-term crises.
Why Are TTP Leaders Not Being Targeted?
From February 27 to March 13, Pakistan’s airstrikes in Afghanistan primarily targeted Taliban border posts, brigades, battalions, and arms and ammunition centres.
Retired Pakistani Brigadier Mahmood Shah said the main driver of Pakistan’s conflict with the Taliban is the activity of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. After the Taliban returned to power, he said, attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas increased, including assaults on military bases and police, as well as attempts to seize border posts, deepening Islamabad’s concerns.
He said Pakistan initially tried to negotiate with the Taliban, but turned to airstrikes after those efforts failed.
However, Pakistani Taliban leaders, whose presence Islamabad has used to justify its operations, have not been targeted, or at least no evidence of such strikes has been shared with the media.
Sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas told Afghanistan International that some TTP leaders returned to their areas of influence in Pakistan at the same time as the attacks in Afghanistan. They also said signs of TTP activity and influence have increased near cities including Peshawar, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Mardan.
That has raised further questions about the true targets of Pakistan’s airstrikes.
If Pakistani militants were the main target, why were strikes carried out at Bagram Airfield, in Kabul, and against Afghan brigades where there is no known TTP presence and no confirmed bases?
Many analysts believe Islamabad is seeking to destroy American weapons in Afghanistan, a goal they say aligns with joint US-Pakistan interests.
US Weapons In Afghanistan
Official US reports show that from 2004 to 2016, the United States supplied the Afghan National Army and police with 599,690 firearms, including light and heavy weapons. Most were light arms, including 358,530 rifles such as M16s, M4s and sniper rifles.
During the same period, 16,191 support devices were also delivered, including night-vision goggles, communication monitors, small reconnaissance drones such as the ScanEagle, and surveillance balloons. The overwhelming majority were night-vision goggles, totalling 16,035 units.
In aviation, a total of 208 aircraft were delivered to Afghan security forces between 2004 and 2016. They included 110 MI-17 and MD-530 helicopters, 60 transport aircraft, including the C-208, C-128, C-130, T-182, G-222 and AN-32, 20 A-29 attack aircraft and 18 PC-12 reconnaissance planes.
In addition, the US supplied 75,898 vehicles, including Rangers, Humvees, lorries and tanks. Of those, 42,604 were Rangers and 22,174 were Humvees, making them the most widely used. Some of the vehicles later became inoperable because of explosives, suicide attacks or prolonged use.
Over the past five years, Pakistan has repeatedly complained to the UN Security Council about US weapons left behind by Afghan forces and the United States, saying some of them ended up in the hands of TTP fighters.
Taliban Mediation And Relations With Pakistan
The Taliban government has officially acknowledged mediating negotiations twice between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Pakistan, saying the process had reached 90 percent progress. However, it said changes in Pakistan’s military leadership and the fall of Imran Khan’s government disrupted those efforts.
A significant faction within the Taliban sees Pakistan’s top military leadership as an obstacle to relations, referring to them as the “special circle”. Members of that faction believe the new Pakistani military leadership opposes talks with armed Pakistani groups and instead pushes them towards taking up arms.
Those uncertainties, combined with the fact that neither TTP leaders nor Taliban leaders have been targeted, have fuelled conspiracy theories about the Taliban-Pakistan conflict.
Political analyst Roshan Karwar described the crisis as a “manufactured war”, arguing that external threats can sometimes help strengthen states. He said Pakistani airstrikes on Kabul gave the Taliban an opportunity to build public support. He added that the fact TTP and Taliban leaders have been spared lends weight to the theory of an engineered conflict.
Pakistan’s Recent Approach
Mohammad Fayyaz, a professor at Lahore University, described Pakistan’s foreign policy over the past two years as “co-ordinated and systematic”.
He said Pakistan does not want to trigger a new domestic or regional crisis, and is instead prioritising border security, economic support and avoiding steps that could threaten the survival of the Taliban regime.
He said expanding the war against the Taliban would fuel new waves of radicalisation. In his view, Islamabad is seeking to contain Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, as an immediate threat without challenging the Taliban’s overall hold on power.
Since the conflict began, however, trade routes between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been closed. The Taliban have shifted their trade focus towards Central Asia and India, while the border between the two countries has been marked by violence and disruption.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said the operations are part of Islamabad’s counterterrorism strategy. Analysts, however, say the actual targets remain unclear.
Although the strikes are publicly framed as an effort to contain the TTP threat, TTP leaders have not been targeted in practice, their Taliban supporters have been spared, civilian casualties have mounted, and tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Durand Line.
The movement of residents out of the area, along with tightened security measures, could leave the border exposed to new waves of insecurity.
Analysts suggest several possible explanations. One is that Pakistan has not yet finalised its strategy and is still testing pressure tactics. Another is that its real objectives are more complex, and more concealed, than officially stated.