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After Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, Halima obtained an electronic mail from the American University of Afghanistan that she could be on a flight out the subsequent day. She took a small backpack with two units of garments, and left behind her household and the first 19 years of her life. The subsequent day, she arrived at the American University of Iraq–Solemani.
She was at first apprehensive about her security in what she thought to be one other war-torn nation, but she ultimately settled in and felt safe at her new campus.
Her course schedule is a combination of in-person courses with fellow students from the college in Iraq and on-line programs with Afghan students from round the world.
Scattered all through the world, the students from the American University of Afghanistan are logging on throughout time zones to proceed their education. Over half of the students have now been evacuated from Afghanistan and are primarily in Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and the U.S., with others in international locations like Germany, France, Chile and Rwanda.
CBS News spoke to seven present students and isn’t utilizing their actual names out of safety considerations for the students and their households.
The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as the nation’s first personal faculty with a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was based with 50 students and grew to over 1,000, with the goal of establishing a type of greater education constructed on the American mannequin. The bodily campus closed quickly after the Taliban took management this summer season.
Over 2,000 miles to the east of Iraq, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Fazal, a enterprise pupil, joins his class from his new house close to the American University of Central Asia. He’s studying some Russian, the native language spoken, to get by in his new setting.
“I wanted to go away my household, my father and mom, as a result of I did not wish to be a menace to them by being affiliated with a U.S. establishment,” he stated.
Concentrating on his research has been troublesome, along with his thoughts wandering again to his homeland and household, but he stays motivated to graduate. “It has been a battle to get again to the similar focus, the consideration span that I beforehand had,” he stated. “But I form of hold making an attempt and placing in effort to get again to being regular.”
“They have been spectacular individuals even in comparatively regular occasions, but what they’re demonstrating now with their resilience and their ambitions and their want to be taught surpasses something I’ve ever seen from students wherever in the world,” stated Ian Bickford, president of the college.
Keeping the courses going hasn’t been simple. Schedules nonetheless run on Kabul time to standardize when students round the world meet. That has students and professors signing on at numerous hours of the night time and day.
The professors preview all the materials at the starting of the week, with on-line class periods appearing as a complement. This format goals to assist students who could not have the ability to attend each class.
“We thought that was a very vital sign to ship to our neighborhood that we are nonetheless there and we are able to nonetheless educate,” stated Dr. Victoria Fontan, vice chairman of educational affairs at the college and a professor of peace and battle research.
The students remaining in Afghanistan face distinctive challenges. With electrical energy and web not dependable, it has been troublesome for Norie to attend class. She has not informed her household that she is constant her research with the college on-line. She fears them discovering out, by accident mentioning her persevering with education and the repercussions that would observe.
But past the nervousness is the loneliness that plagues her present life as a girl in Afghanistan. “I am unable to go alone to satisfy with my pals. I am unable to buy groceries alone. I am unable to go do sports activities. I used to run with my father in the morning and I am unable to anymore.”
In a refugee facility in France, Hassan, a pupil who made it out of Afghanistan on his personal, stated he by no means thought he would go away his nation and worries about his future.
“When I got here to France, I misplaced my hope. I used to be like, I’m nothing proper now. I used to be learning, and right here I’ve nothing. I do not also have a bachelor’s diploma.” From his room at the facility, he continues along with his courses on-line in hopes that he shall be relocated to a college. While nonetheless a pupil in Kabul, he was engaged on growing a software program that might make it simpler for students to take courses from their cellphone. He worries that his household is in peril and that there’s nothing he can do to assist them.
Even as the students are unfold throughout 28 international locations, some nonetheless hope to see their futures in Afghanistan. Pashtana Dorani was evacuated to the U.S. in late October on a researcher visa. She is at Wellesley College in Massachusetts researching the impression of battle on ladies’s education whereas ending her undergraduate diploma.
In Afghanistan, she based LEARN, a nonprofit centered on education, organizing initiatives round digital literacy and menstrual hygiene administration. While grateful for the alternative to be in the U.S., she maintains that she desires to take the abilities she learns again to her dwelling nation when it feels protected.
“Staying in the U.S. is sweet, I’m grateful for the assist I’ve proper now, and I’m so grateful for all these wonderful ladies round me,” she stated. “But at the finish of the day, the coronary heart is the place house is. And house is Afghanistan.”
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