Teaching Afghan Women Changed How I Read the News

The friendships I formed through a WhatsApp classroom revealed the women behind the headlines in all their complexity—and why our responsibility to them should not end when the story does.

For a long time, I knew Afghan women the way most people do: through headlines. They appeared in stories about school bans, compulsory burqas, and Taliban decrees, but rarely as fully formed people. That changed when I began teaching English to a group of young Afghan women over WhatsApp.

Most of them were teenagers when we first met, having lost their right to education after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. I am in my mid-forties, but over the past few years we have become friends.

Their friendship has changed how I consume the news. It has made me more aware of how headlines are designed to provoke immediate emotional reactions, and of how easily we mistake that reaction for sustained attention. More than anything, it has shown me that people often disappear from public consciousness long before their problems disappear from reality.

Like many people, I once had a two-dimensional view of Afghan women. I saw victims whose suffering was visible, but whose personalities were not. The young women I speak with each week are funny, cheeky, clever, ambitious, irreverent, and principled. They have strong opinions, challenge one another, tell jokes, and worry about the same everyday things as my friends and colleagues. Knowing them has shown me how readily we reduce people to symbols, overlooking the rich, complicated lives behind the headlines. Denied a platform in their own country, they have embraced the internet as a space to learn, connect, and satisfy an insatiable curiosity about the world.

Our conversations can feel surprisingly ordinary, which makes it easy to forget how extraordinary their circumstances are. They have spent years denied an education. Their freedom of movement is almost nonexistent: they cannot leave home without the permission and accompaniment of a male relative. Whenever I stop to imagine what that means in practice—the dependence, the constant negotiation, the confinement—I feel claustrophobic.

While many of us in the West debate the internet’s impact on our mental health and our children, for the women I know in Afghanistan it is a lifeline. It is their only window to the outside world—a place to study, connect with like-minded people, and imagine a future beyond the confines of Taliban rule. It also offers something many of us take for granted: the freedom to explore ideas without asking permission.

The women we teach are among the fortunate few whose families can afford an internet connection and allow them to use it. It is no exaggeration to say that much of their world depends on it.

That is why, when the Taliban shut down the internet last year, these women were terrified. The international community’s response to the blackout demonstrated what might happen if it lasted longer: a day or two of outrage, a handful of hashtags, statements from governments and NGOs, and then the world's attention would move on. For the women I teach, they feared losing their only link to the outside world—and, with it, disappearing from public view.

I couldn’t reassure them because they were right. I had spoken to a couple of girls just that morning, and the experience of our text conversations being suddenly cut short, and my read receipts remaining singular and grey—neither received nor read—was unnerving. It occurred to me that I had always been perversely ‘pleased’ when Afghanistan made the headlines, because it meant the world focused on the country for a short time. But if the internet were to stay off, it would not take long for us all to forget Afghanistan because there would be no story: like the internet, our imaginations cannot function in a vacuum—we’d be distracted by other news and move on.

The internet rewards visibility. It is built to amplify what is new, dramatic, and emotionally immediate, not to sustain attention over time. For Afghan women, however, visibility can be dangerous. Remaining out of sight is often essential for survival under the Taliban. Yet the paradox is that people who cannot safely make themselves seen are also the easiest to forget.

Recently, Afghanistan returned to the headlines when the Taliban legalized marriage for girls as young as nine. The announcement rightly prompted widespread outrage and served as a reminder that millions of people continue to live under Taliban rule. But history suggests that attention will soon move elsewhere. The Taliban has learned that it can repeatedly cross moral lines, knowing each new headline will eventually be replaced by another. As consumers of news, we need to recognize that meaningful support depends not on moments of outrage, but on sustained attention.

This pattern extends beyond the headlines themselves. Plenty of institutions have learned the benefits of the aesthetics of charity, while knowing the spotlight will fade before any questions arise about the effectiveness (or existence) of their initiatives.

While researching opportunities abroad for some of the women I teach, I found universities proudly advertising scholarships for refugees and Afghan women that were almost impossible for refugees or Afghan women to access. Some required qualifications these women had been prevented from obtaining because of the education ban. Others required them to be on campus to benefit from them.

Similarly, commitments made by organizations and companies often involve public promises but privately underdeliver. Most initiatives have to be legal in the local country, which sounds like a respectful and reasonable requirement until we remember that the Taliban created laws specifically to erase women from public life: retreating behind these same laws is legitimizing them, not challenging them, and certainly not providing support to those in need. Those with the most to gain from these pledges and promises are voiceless and cannot speak out, while those of us in a position to hold institutions accountable are continually distracted.

I do not believe this is solely the responsibility of institutions. It is also down to us as consumers of information. We cannot pay attention to everything, but we can be more deliberate about where we direct our attention and how long we keep it there. Looking beyond the headlines does not require special expertise; it just requires curiosity and interest in the world beyond ourselves.

Personally, I have found that curiosity helps curb a sense of helplessness and compassion fatigue that can set in from endless doom-scrolling. The women I teach have taught me to be more active and intentional in what I pay attention to. They are striving to maintain their education so they are prepared for any opportunity that might come along; it’s up to us to ensure those opportunities reach them.

Each week, the teachers I work alongside spend time speaking with women in Afghanistan, asking nothing of them beyond what they would like to talk about. Those conversations have transformed how I see Afghanistan, what is happening there, and the voices that must be heard.

Where I once saw anonymous victims, I now see individuals with humor, talent, dignity, and agency.

These women—and the millions more like them across Afghanistan—deserve more than fleeting sympathy whenever a new Taliban atrocity makes the news. They deserve to be seen, heard, and remembered as people with ambitions, talents, and agency. Real solidarity, the type that enables people to challenge the status quo, is more than statements of concern and virtue-signaling; it demands sustained commitment, practical support, and accountability for the promises made in their name. By listening, we help these women shape their stories and bring them to a wider audience. By ensuring that scholarships, grants, and opportunities are genuinely accessible, we empower them with the conditions they need to build the futures they want for themselves and their country.

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