In a small, sunlit room last week, 20 little girls seated on rush mats sketched a flower drawn on the blackboard. In a darker, interior room, 15 older girls recited passages from the Koran. Upstairs was a class of teenage girls, hidden from view.

The location of the mud-walled home school is a close secret. The students include five girls who attended another home school that was burnt down three months ago.

The very existence of these classes is a challenge to the insurgents who have attacked dozens of schools across Afghanistan in the past year, especially those teaching girls.

"We are scared. All the home schools are scared. If I even hear a dog bark, I don't open the gate. I go up on the roof to see who is there," said Mohammed Sulieman, 49, who teaches in several villages in Wardak Province.

Children's education was once touted as a success in this country. Within two years of the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, who banned girls' education, officials boasted that 5.1 million children of both sexes were enrolled in state schools, including hundreds of village tent-schools erected by UNICEF.

Now that positive tide has come to a halt in several provinces where Taliban insurgents are battling NATO troops, and has slowed dramatically in many other regions.

President Hamid Karzai said last week that some 200,000 Afghan children had been forced out of school this year by threats and violence.

According to UNICEF, 106 attacks or threats against schools occurred from January to August. They included missile attack, arson attacks and threats. In the four southern provinces under serious assault by Taliban forces, nearly half of the 748 schools have closed. Bernt Aasen, of UNICEF, has warned that the attacks "undermine the very fabric of the future of Afghan society."

In the southern province of Kandahar, all schools are closed in five districts. Attackers have hurled grenades into classrooms and threatened to throw acid on girl pupils. In Helmand province, a headteacher was beheaded. Three districts have closed all schools.

In the 1990s, civil conflict and religious repression hampered education. Many teachers fled the country. Families who could afford to do so educated their children abroad.

In rural areas education became virtually inaccessible, especially for girls, and in some places female literacy fell to less than 1 per cent.

Girls' schools welcomed

State education remains controversial for girls, especially once they reach puberty and custom forbids them to mix with boys.

But In northern provinces, where the Taliban threat is minimal and customs more moderate, many communities have welcomed foreign offers to build schools for girls.

One such community is in Parwan, a lush but impoverished province of rushing streams and terraced fields. This summer the US Army built an eight-room school for 300 girls in Mollai Village, the first in the area. In one class every child is the first girl in her family to attend school.

"There are still a few parents who don't want their daughters to come, but we keep talking to them," said the teacher, Mahmad Agul, 25.

"We lack everything here paved roads, electrical power, deep wells, clinics. But this school was our highest priority."

Nazia, 10, stood to recite a poem, speaking nervously but without a hitch. Afterwards, she said she had learnt to read at home but had not attended school before: "Before, we were just sitting in the dust. Now we have desks and chairs and a roof."

In the remote northwest provinces, Save the Children has been working with officials to promote schooling for girls.

"Every kid in Afghanistan has been affected by conflict, but you still have to try and educate them. It can't just stop," said Leslie Wilson of Save the Children. In Sar-e Pol province, she said, there are three times more girls in school than three years ago: "It's a drop in the bucket, but it's progress."

Where schools are too distant or too dangerous to attend, hundreds of communities have set up home schools. And with the revival of the Taliban threat, they are becoming an important alternative.

Source: China Daily