Among the photographs Najib Sorosh kept from Afghanistan are images of classrooms filled with children.
For Sorosh, now living in Prince Albert, they are reminders of a time when he believed education could give Afghanistan something decades of war had failed to provide: lasting change.
“The best way to make a change in a country is the way of education,” Sorosh said. “If you educate the people, then the society easily will be changed in the future.”
Sorosh spent more than 20 years working in education in Afghanistan and helped establish Marefat High School and Pegah High School, where girls made up close to half of the student population. Some of the students went on to universities outside Afghanistan, including in Bangladesh, the United States, Europe and Japan.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada later featured his story as part of its coverage of Afghan newcomers rebuilding their lives in Canada.
After arriving in Saskatchewan in September 2021, Sorosh first worked as an interpreter with Global Gathering Place in Saskatoon before moving into settlement work in Prince Albert. IRCC identified him as a settlement counsellor with YWCA Prince Albert, helping refugees and immigrants adjust to life in Canada.
Sorosh believed Afghanistan’s history had already demonstrated the limits of trying to transform the country through force.
“Different military groups, or even sometimes social groups, they try to make changes to our country, but not through education,” he said. “They try to make these changes through the military ways, but it didn’t work in all our history.”
His belief was that educating a new generation would be slower, but the change would last.
Photo courtesy of Najib Sorosh/Facebook
Students are pictured in an examination hall in Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Former educator Najib Sorosh said he believed education could create lasting change in Afghanistan after decades of war.
Sunday marked five years since the final U.S. military forces left Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, ending nearly 20 years of American military involvement that began following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The final weeks of the withdrawal were marked by scenes of desperation at Kabul’s airport as thousands of Afghans tried to get onto evacuation flights after the Taliban seized the capital. On Aug. 16, 2021, video showed people clinging to a U.S. military C-17 as it took off, with people later seen falling from the aircraft. The images became some of the most haunting symbols of the collapse and the rush to escape Afghanistan. More than 130,000 civilians were ultimately evacuated during the U.S.-led airlift.
By the time the final American aircraft left Kabul, Sorosh had already fled the country.
He was in Kabul when the Taliban entered the capital on Aug. 15, 2021.
Sorosh said he and several family members had gone to a passport office after watching the security situation deteriorate in the days before the takeover. They were waiting to complete the process when his wife called.
“She said that Taliban has taken over the capital,” Sorosh recalled.
Soon afterward, an employee announced that the passport office was closing and told everyone to leave.
Sorosh returned home, collected his wife and children and went into hiding. For about a week, he said, the family moved between different locations while trying to find a way out of the country.
They eventually left Afghanistan on Aug. 27, three days before the American withdrawal was completed.
Sorosh said his involvement in educating girls was one of the reasons he feared remaining under Taliban rule. With girls and women making up a large part of the schools’ students and staff, Sorosh worried that he, his relatives and colleagues could become targets.
Five years later, some of the students he remembers most clearly are the girls who never received the opportunity to finish what they started.
Sorosh said he had exceptionally talented female students whom he believed could have gone on to significant careers. A small number managed to leave Afghanistan and continue their education elsewhere, he said, but most remained behind.
Under Taliban rule, girls are prevented from continuing regular schooling beyond Grade 6, while women have also faced restrictions on higher education, employment and public life.
Sorosh worries the consequences will extend well beyond the students currently being kept from classrooms.
He said today’s girls will become mothers and members of the next generation of Afghan families, meaning the loss of education now could continue affecting the country for decades.
Students gather in a school hall in Afghanistan in a photograph shared by Najib Sorosh on Facebook.
His own sister and her family remain in Afghanistan, along with former students, colleagues and friends.
Sorosh said hundreds of families connected with his educational community were able to reach Canada with outside assistance following the Taliban takeover, but many others remain in Afghanistan.
He does not describe the Afghanistan before August 2021 as peaceful. There was war, insecurity and political corruption. Taliban attacks were part of that conflict, while Afghan government forces and international militaries were also fighting across the country.
The large-scale war that defined much of the previous two decades has since largely ended, something Sorosh acknowledges. But he does not believe the absence of open warfare has given Afghans genuine peace.
He compared the situation to a forest where smaller or weaker animals hide when dangerous animals arrive.
“It’s not a real peace that people can enjoy,” Sorosh said.
He said Afghans may no longer face the same level of fighting, but many live with fear of authorities, poverty and an uncertain future.
Sorosh also believes the Taliban has changed in some ways since its previous period in power.
“I think they changed a little bit compared to their previous time,” he said.
He pointed to television and some educational and cultural activities that are tolerated today compared with Taliban rule in the 1990s.
However, Sorosh believes at least some of that change is practical. He said Taliban leaders understand they must maintain power and deal with foreign governments, something that requires them to behave differently in certain areas.
For Sorosh, the problem goes beyond individual Taliban policies. He believes religion and ideology should be separated from the way a government exercises power.
Girls and boys take part in a school activity on stage in Afghanistan in a photograph shared by Najib Sorosh on Facebook.
It was an idea he said he tried to teach his students while working in Afghanistan.
Sorosh said religion should remain a personal matter, with people free to follow their own beliefs. Problems arise, he said, when political leaders use a particular religion or ideology to govern everyone and force others to live according to it.
“If it’s different, then they will be punished,” Sorosh said.
He pointed to Afghanistan and Iran as examples of what can happen when religious ideology becomes closely tied to government power.
“This is the problem with our community, with our country, and some other countries like that,” Sorosh said. “If you see nowadays what is happening in Iran and some other countries and in Afghanistan, this is the main problem.”
Sorosh stressed that his argument was broader than religion alone. He said any ideology can become harmful when a government imposes it on people rather than allowing individuals to make their own choices.
“Any kind of ideology should be separated from politics and from the governing of the people,” he said.
Afghanistan has also been promoted as a destination for foreign tourists in recent years, with visitors drawn to its mountains, history and culture.
Sorosh said there is no question his homeland has beautiful places worth seeing.
Najib Sorosh fled the country following the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
But he cautioned that a visitor’s experience may be very different from the lives of Afghans living under Taliban rule.
He said foreign visitors can be treated well and shown safe and attractive areas because their photographs and videos will eventually be seen outside Afghanistan.
“They are showing the good part of the country, but in the real life, it’s not like that,” Sorosh said.
For Sorosh, one of the greatest changes in Afghanistan cannot easily be measured in statistics.
It is the loss of hope.
“Hope is like a candle in your life, in the middle of a darkness,” he said.
That candle, he explained, gives someone a path to follow. It provides a reason to work, learn and believe that effort can produce something better.
Sorosh said many people he knows in Afghanistan have lost that feeling.
“They are just trying to exist,” he said.
Still, he has not abandoned Afghanistan.
Sorosh said he would not return while the current government remains in power, both because of security concerns and because he does not believe he would be able to continue the work that once defined his life.
But if Afghanistan changes, he already knows what he wants to do.
He wants to open a school again.
“My best goal is still opening again school and start again teaching the new generation,” Sorosh said.
Five years after leaving Afghanistan, the classrooms in his photographs remain more than memories.
They represent the way Sorosh still believes his country can move forward.
arjun.pillai@paherald.sk.ca
