‘Nobody is coming to help us’: Afghan teenage girls on

Barred from school for 1,000 days, girls in Afghanistan face forced marriage, violence and isolation with no end in sight

Just over three years ago, Asma’s* future contained many possibilities. Aged 15, she was at secondary school. After that lay the prospect of university and then onwards, striding forwards into the rest of her life.

Like many Afghan girls, she understood that education was her route out of the isolation and repression that had constricted the lives of her mother and grandmother under the previous Taliban regime. She was part of a new generation of Afghan women who had the chance to build independent and economically autonomous lives.