Saturday, September 13th
At Dubai airport, waiting at the gate for FlyDubai’s departure to Kabul, I get talking to the beautifully groomed woman with perfect English and enviable gold jewellery sitting next to me. She is Afghan and travelling back to her homeland after 30 years, from Sydney, Australia, where she now lives. Her husband and seven-year-old daughter are with her. It is to be a six-week holiday.
I have not previously thought of Afghanistan as a place to voluntarily holiday in. Yet here this family are, the child carrying a shiny pink unicorn backpack and wearing light-up shoes.
“Do you have any concerns for your safety?” I ask this woman, as Flight FZ307 starts boarding, and we all get up.
“No,” she says, laughing. “I think that the media have sensationalised the situation.”
RM Block
I have not told her I am a journalist.
I am travelling to Afghanistan for one week, representing The Irish Times at the invitation of Unicef, to visit some of the projects they support there. Peter Power, the Irish executive director, and Vivienne Parry, head of media and communications, are travelling out with me.
The three-hour flight to Kabul is full, and when the announcement to prepare for landing is relayed, any woman not already wearing a headscarf, including me, puts one on. For the next week, when in public, I will wear long sleeves and long skirts or trousers, and this headscarf.
“Welcome to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” reads a sign at Kabul Airport. The expression that is in common local usage for the current government is “de-facto authorities”. The rest of the world know them as the Taliban.
UN staff all stay at a large compound to the east of Kabul city and, for security reasons, are not permitted to leave it for any purpose other than preapproved work, which is described as “going on mission”. Every vehicle I travel in is armoured, with bulletproof glass.
The drive to the compound from the airport is lined with trees, and passes the central marketplace chaos common to any Asian city centre: vendors selling melons, tomatoes, onions, pomegranates, chilies; tuk tuks weaving between lorries, battered Toyota Corollas and the distinctive pale blue taxis. Despite the crazy traffic, and the absence of traffic lights, astonishingly, no drivers are honking horns, which is certainly not the norm in any other Asian city I have visited.
I see many women out and about, shopping at the market in twos and threes, on the street with children or being driven in vehicles. All are in coverings and head scarves, but many of these coverings are brightly coloured or sparkling with sequins or diamanté. I see very few women in full burkas, which are invariably in a shade of blue. Most women’s faces are fully visible.
Sunday, September 14th
Back to the airport to fly the two hours west to Herat on Kam Air, Afghanistan’s only commercial domestic airline. “Trustable Wings” is its slogan. In Herat, as in Kabul, there is a curfew between 10pm and 5am.
The Taliban infamously banned education for girls beyond primary level when they took over in 2021. But small primary schools, accessible to both girls and boys, still operate with the approval of the Taliban. There are some 2,633 of these community-based education schools (CBEs) functioning in the western area of Afghanistan. Children are educated up to Grade 3 level, which is usually to age nine, but for various reasons some children attending Grade 3 in this school are older.
There are two mixed classrooms in the little CBE compound at Jebrail, half an hour’s drive from Herat. Classes are for three hours a day, in the afternoon. In the first classroom, Fatuma Jofan is the teacher. The room is small, but the walls and ceilings are brightly decorated with drawings. There is a simple whiteboard, and no technology in sight. There are no desks. Pupils sit on the floor. A small pile of books is neatly stacked in front of each child. Everyone also has a repurposed tin can containing a couple of pens.
What have they been learning this morning?
Zahara (11) says: “We learned about Islamic manners.”
“We learned to treat our elders with respect,” Ali Raza (12) says. “And about calendars. Days in the week and month.”
“I want to be a dentist,” Masoma (11) says when I ask the class what they would like to be when they grow up.
“I would like to be a maths teacher,” says Marzia (12). Then, unprompted, she recites the 10 times multiplication table.
Abdullah (10) wants to be an engineer, and “make houses for people to be happy in”.
Masoma and Marzia are girls. Under current restrictions, they will not continue their education beyond this grade. Unless things change, neither will have the opportunity to learn dentistry or be a teacher of maths. It’s unclear to me if they know that, as things stand, this is their last year of education.
We move to the second classroom. Teacher Mosoma Mohammadi studied physics at Herat University. “I wanted to be a university professor,” she says. I ask her where the Grade 3 children she taught last year are now. “The boys have gone on to another school, but the girls are all at home.”
I ask the children what they like to do for fun. Hands windmill up.
“I like to play volleyball with my little brother,” Tayaba Mohammadi (10) says.
“I like to watch football on TV, and cartoons,” Amir Hussain (9) says. “I learned the English alphabet from TV,” and he recites it perfectly.
Fatima Rezai (10) shows me her neat schoolbooks and copies that feature accomplished drawings. I ask what is her favourite subject. “Islamic Studies. I want to remember all the words of the Koran.”
At this point, I become aware of a commotion outside, and I am told we have to leave.
Afterwards, I never get a clear answer from anyone as to exactly what happened, or why we had to leave in such a rush. I learn only that men have turned up unannounced, and it has been deemed prudent by Unicef staff that we stop the visit immediately and depart.
We return to Herat, a city famous for its ancient Musalla Minarets, and for the country’s finest saffron, and check into the Arg Hotel. The hotel is surrounded by an exterior steel wall and an interior brick one. Our vehicle is checked underneath for mines, and both ourselves and our belongings are searched every time we enter the hotel.
On check-in, a staff member tells us that he will show us to what I hear as “the banker”. Hotel bills are to be paid in cash in US dollars ($60 a night, or about €51), so I assume we are being taken to the cashier’s office. We are not. I have misheard. We are taken to “the bunker”, which is a windowless concrete space behind a heavy metal door on the ground floor of the hotel, where we are to go to shelter should sirens start wailing.
Every evening when we come back from dinner, I am to discover that a staff member will unlock a similarly heavy metal door off the lobby for us, which leads to the lift, stairwell and rooms upstairs. I am in room 308 on the third floor, which is for women only.
Monday, September 15th
On our three-hour drive to the reception centre at the Islam-Qala border, which is one of two where Afghan returnees are entering the country from Iran, our two vehicles are escorted. I note along the way all week that most of the guards on the public roads wear military-style bandoliers – straps worn across the chest with slots for ammunition – draped across their chests. They carry AK-47s.
By the end of the week, I will have seen more guns than I have in my entire life. “If you want to stay safe in Afghanistan, you have to carry a gun,” one person I meet says to me.
The nearer we come to the border, the drier the landscape is. Houses here are mostly mud huts, with rounded roofs. Sand flows across the road. At the border, porters wait with wheelbarrows and trailers to help transport across belongings.
In recent years of unrest and instability, especially since 2021, many Afghan people emigrated to either neighbouring Iran or Pakistan. Some left because they had been working for the previous government and it was no longer safe to remain. This year, their Iranian temporary residential permits expired, and were not extended. Deportations began, and continue. In July alone, there was an average return rate to Afghanistan from Iran across this border of 17,500 people a day, with all the disrupted lives those numbers represent.
To date, more than 2.5 million Afghan people have been forced to return from Iran, with two more million due to follow them in the coming weeks and months. Pakistan is sending back 1.4 million Afghan people.
At the Islam-Qala reception centre, a cluster of UN and other non-profit agencies are working together to support the returnees. They include Unicef, the Women’s Activities and Social Services Association, (WASSA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). Collectively, these organisations are helping returnees with a number of practical services, including nutrition, vaccinations, health checks and the provision of Sim cards.
The entire camp, from its bathroom blocks to huge tents where families can rest and vaccination rooms, seems to my uneducated eye to be extremely well organised and exceptionally clean. Most people stay a night or so here and then travel onwards; either to Herat or to family.
In one half of the Safe Child Centre tent, children are playing on a mat scattered with hula hoops and colourful plastic bricks, paper chains strung overhead. In the other half, mothers gather around Atifa Haidan, who is offering what the centre describes as “psycho social support”. Haidan’s job is to give advice and explain social context to the frequently confused and concerned female returnees about what they might expect their lives in Afghanistan to be.
In 2025, anyone with a phone has a connection to the internet, and these women travelling unwillingly from Iran are well aware of the situation around girls’ education in Afghanistan.
“The adolescent girls, particularly, have concerns related to their education,” Haidan tells me, explaining how she tries to support both them and the mothers who know they now cannot work outside the home. “I try to give them hope that this situation may not last. That they need to be optimistic. That they can use the internet and TV to stay online and try to learn. That maybe one day the schools will reopen.”
How do the girls react?
“Most of the time, they burst into tears,” she says. Sometimes these young girls ask Haidan for her phone number, so they can call her later, when they have moved on from here, if they feel they are struggling to adapt. She tells me she has received many such calls in the three months she has been working here at the border.
In a nearby tent, families are gathered, resting and taking stock for their next move.
Sitting together are Sabira Faizi (43), her husband Jan Ali (43), a leather-worker, and their son Ahmed (nine). An older son was deported earlier in the summer. They had been living in Iran for 11 years and had rented a house there. They used the deposit to fund their journey and take their possessions with them. They hope to rent in Herat.
Sabira points to her son. “Local people in Iran started to treat him harshly. They knew he was Afghan, and were bullying him.”
Yagana and Yonis Bahrami are sitting with their baby son of 11 months. Yagana (25) has been in Iran for 11 years. She was educated until the age of 16, to grade 11. Yonis explains they were lucky in that they were able to bring most of their possessions with them.
“I am concerned about the restrictions here,” Yagana says. “Women are one half of the population of any country, and it is very unfair that we cannot provide our part to society. There will not be any opportunity here for employment for me. But I know that I have to adapt to the situation.”
Tuesday, September 16th
The Guzargah transit centre for unaccompanied and separated children is a 15-minute drive on the outskirts of Herat. To date this year, the centre has seen a total of 4,494 minors come through; with only 43 of them girls. Most boys stay here no longer than a day, being given the onward support they need to locate family, as well as health checks and counselling. The centre is a calm, well-organised space, with a football pitch, simple accommodation and a cafeteria.
There are 12 boys here today, between the ages of 11 and 16; children that otherwise would have nowhere else to go after being forced to cross the border alone. They would be vulnerable to abuse or exploitation without this transit centre. None of them have any documents. When we arrive into the room where they are sitting, there is a pungent smell of adolescent sweat, and a distinctive atmosphere of something essentially primitive: anxiety, fear, adrenaline. The boys are taking turns to tell their counsellor how they were forced to leave Iran.
[ Britain's Afghan data leak: Panic, a press gag and a secret relocation schemeOpens in new window ]
One boy recounts how he was on his way to work at a barber’s shop when he was arrested. He was not permitted to call his family. He had to take what he had with him, and was deported on the spot. Another speaks of having been hung up by the ankles in detention before being deported. Everyone listens intently to each other’s other story, leaning in over their chairs. They applaud loudly in spontaneous support when each boy finishes speaking. One of these boys is only 11 years old and, to my eye, he looks even younger.
Sonia Nama Shahabi is the warm and welcoming person who looks after any unaccompanied girls who arrive here. The last such girl came through four days previously. Her family had been deported in advance of her. “She had been left behind with relatives in Iran to continue her education,” Shahabi says. The girl too had been discovered by the Iranian authorities and then deported.
I’m shown the scrupulously clean, simple room with three white-covered beds where this girl spent the night. It overlooks a serene little garden with swing chairs and bright flowers. The girl, who was 18, is now safe with her family elsewhere in Afghanistan. I am still looking around the bedroom when Shahabi says: “This girl was very much concerned about her future in Afghanistan and her education.”
I ask Shahabi what she said to the girl.
“I tried to give her hope that the situation would change. To continue reading books, and to do vocational work, such as tailoring and embroidery, which women are allowed to do at home.”
When I leave this part of the centre, I see that the boys are now outside in a field, having an ad-hoc game of football. They are shouting and running and jumping to kick the ball. Thrown together at random like this, after tomorrow, they may never seen each other again, but right now, the shared language of football is salve enough that they are all laughing as the ball flies through the air.
It is our last day in Herat and although we cannot stop and get out, the drivers bring us past the famous Musalla Minarets, which were once covered with blue tiles. They also bring us to the one shop I visit in Afghanistan: a fancy supermarket/homewares place, where Afghan families are stocking up. “You can only park here if you have an armoured vehicle,” our driver tells me.
Along with the gold-rimmed glasses and bowls, thermo flasks and gold trays, there is a floor of grocery products; many of which are western brands. I see Heinz Ketchup, Nando’s Piri Piri Sauce, Tabasco, Aptamil formula, Ritz crackers and Pampers. I also spend some time looking at the confectionery counter. One pink cake is in a heart shape, with LOVE iced on the top, Another is covered in gold dollar signs, $100 US banknotes, cigars and a fat wallet, all made of icing.
On the way back to the Arg Hotel, I see, incredibly, a car being driven by a woman . She is alone. In my week in Afghanistan, I never see another woman driving, let alone driving solo.
That evening, there is a news report that for the first time since the Taliban took power, “Supreme Leader” Hibatullah Akhundzada had ordered that wifi be banned in the region ofof Balkh. A government spokesperson gave the reason as to “prevent immorality”. The impact of this will be immediate for those people - particularly women and girls - at home who either work or study online, as many do. At the time of writing, it remains unclear if this ban will become more widespread.
Wednesday, September 17th
We fly back to Kabul on a 20-seater UN plane, which is fully occupied.
Thursday, September 18th
It is more than a two-hour drive to Logar, south of Kabul. Once again, we have vehicles escorting us there. The drive there is incredibly beautiful. Vast mountain ranges rise and fall against the sky, and the now-dry valleys are clearly lush and gorgeous in the rainy season.
The hospital at Baraki Rajan is at the end of an unpaved road, in bucolic countryside, scattered with small mud-walled compounds. The heat hits like a slab of stone when we step out of the vehicle.
The 62-bed facility has been here in one form or other for 35 years explains the head of the hospital, Dr Mohammad Akul. He has been working there for 15 years. Since 2022, the hospital has been supported by Unicef.
Dr Shabnum Rahimi (28) is one of 38 medical personnel working here, but the only woman medical doctor. Each day, she sees between 100 and 120 women, some of whom come on behalf of their children.
The waiting room to Dr Rahimi’s office is full, and here, the majority of women are wearing full burkas, although with the fabric pulled aside from their faces. Most don’t have their faces covered, although before the local (male) photographer with us takes a portrait, they all vanish as one beneath their burkas, many squealing with laughter as they do.
Before working at this hospital, Dr Rahimi worked as a medical lecturer in a private university in Kabul. The demands of her job in this rural hospital, where the average family size is 10, are very different. There are four women midwives, but as the sole female doctor on site, she has a large caseload, and all the responsibility that comes with it. Dr Rahimi tells me that she works Saturday to Thursday, 8am to 4pm, and usually also spends two overnights a week at the hospital. Her monthly salary is $449.
“I have a dream for Afghanistan,” she says. “I hope one day that girls here can improve their education and study so they can participate in society.”
At least three women I talked to in the shade of a building outside tell me they have walked long distances – more than an hour in the 30-degree-plus heat – because they have sore throats. A sore throat is rarely an ailment that brings adults to a hospital in western parts of the world. I have already noticed very many pharmacies, and know you don’t need a prescription in Afghanistan to access most drugs.
Under current restrictions, in addition to the suspension of education for adolescent girls, women cannot work outside the home, cannot attend beauty salons and cannot gather together in public parks. At some point, it strikes me that these visits to the local hospital at Baraki Rajan may also double as a safe social opportunity for women to leave the seclusion of their homes by having a valid medical reason to go somewhere else.
Every woman I speak to later comes back to me with their phone in hand, and asks to take a picture of the two of us together. One woman’s phone case is full of golden glitter, with drawings of lipstick and eyeshadow, and is emblazoned with the words in English, “Wake Up and Make Up”.
Saturday, September 20th
We depart Kabul. As I look out the window, what I keep seeing in my mind is the image of the brave unknown woman I saw, driving her car alone, in the pre-sunset traffic melee of Herat.
Rosita Boland travelled to Afghanistan as a guest of Unicef. Donations can be made at Unicef.ie
