AFGHANISTAN: Kandahar Women Risk Paying the Ultimate Price in Pursuit of Higher Learning

The Canadian-funded textbooks and computers aren't overly expensive — certainly not compared to the price Afghan women risk having to pay for using them.

The sort of mundane learning most westerners have long taken for granted carries a persistent and very real threat for female students in southern Afghanistan: injury or death at the hands of the Taliban.

For the determined, however, it's no deterrent.

"For sure, I am afraid," says Heena Tariq, a teenager who's taking an online accounting course at a school in Kandahar city.

"It's not fair we are afraid and stay home. We have to be brave. We have to study for the future and brighten our lives."

Tariq is one of about 700 women who have defied custom and the threat of insurgent thuggery to attend the Afghan-Canadian Community Centre.

The centre, a professional-development school, teaches business management, computer technology and English, as well as leadership and job-oriented skills.

It exists because the women's thirst for learning and self-sufficiency outweighs their fears; because of Canadian largesse; and because of the energetic idealism of its founder, Ehsanullah Ehsan.

Born in neighbouring Zabul province but raised in the Kandahar city region, Ehsan is convinced women should be educated.

"It's simply not easy: these women suffer so much," he says. "Every time, we expect something unwanted may happen.

"Despite all these challenges and difficulties, all of these women come out; they get the skills they need and then they take jobs."

It was in 2006 that Ehsan's struggles to run a small school for females attracted the attention of two donors in Ottawa. At the end of that year, he opened the centre with 12 female students.

More students began enrolling. Soon, he opened the first Internet cafe for women in Kandahar. And the school blossomed into one of the most popular in the region, eventually attracting financial support from the Canadian government.

Ottawa recently agreed to give $250,000 to the school for the coming year, but the hope is for a commitment until 2014 to allow it to develop a solid business model.

Adam Sweet, a spokesman for the Canadian International Development Agency in Kandahar, says education was a "key element" of Canada's "unwavering" support of Afghan females.

As a result, Canada will continue to support education programming in Afghanistan even after the Canadian combat mission comes to an end in July.

An annual budget equivalent to the paycheque of one high school principal in Canada allows the centre to keep 59 teachers — nine of them women — and 10 support staff on the payroll. Male students bring the student population to about 1,500.
There is generator power around the clock, 90 computers and an Internet connection. And the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology provides 50 scholarships to the women to take its online courses.

Asked if he, too, is worried for his safety, Ehsan replies with an emphatic question: "Well, why not?"

"One has to be worried," he says. "We are doing a job that so many people are upset about."

Proof of his point is easy to come by.

Two motorcyclists recently drew a pistol on a female student in front of the school gate. The school's bus driver has been warned not to pick up females. On Tuesday, insurgents shot dead the principal of a girls' school in Logar province.
And the stories of teachers and students being beheaded or having acid thrown in their faces have made headlines around the world.

"It is still a society where work and education is an honour problem for women," Ehsan says.

"(But) there are so many people who support us here, who work hard to protect us, who work to spread a good word for us. That's driving these bad forces away."

Still, many of the women, who range from their teens to approaching middle age, pull on burkas before travelling to or from the tranquil confines of the school, which is located on a quiet side street.

Ehsan's efforts clearly inspire them.

"He's doing these things for us so we can have a bright life and future, so we can serve our country," says Tariq, her voice taut with emotion. Ehsan, she says, deserves their full efforts.

"We should come out of the home and we should struggle. We also have to give him a result."

At the community centre, woman are admitted free. Male students pay a few dollars a month for a course — enough to make their programs self-sustaining.

Lida Hiday, 21, who is taking an online course in business administration through SAIT, said education is critical for the women themselves, their families, and Afghanistan.

"We don't want to show that it is a weakness we are women. We can do anything we want if we really want it," she says.

"Sometimes, when the situation is intense, we are really having problems. But still we are trying hard to come."

Hundreds of the centre's graduates are now transforming workplaces that were once male-only domains. They have well-paid office jobs, mostly with international and government organizations.

The school has stripped away an unwanted veil that has always separated the women from the outside, Ehsan says.

"Today, they are talking to the world. They have opened up to the world."