The Naswan Girl's School in Badakhshan Province's remote

The Naswan Girl's School in Badakhshan Province's remote Shughnan district—arguably Afghanistan's rural capital of learning—in the country's far north-east, on the border with Tajikistan. Due to the district's lack of agricultural land (being set on one side of a steep valley), its proximity to the Tajik city of Khorog (across the river) and its relatively high number of education institutions, Shughnis have, for two decades now, been producing the teachers doing much of the educating, not only in their province of Badakhshan, but across all of northern Afghanistan. During the Taliban years of the late '90s, in the neighbouring province of Takhar, it is said that teachers—many from Shughnan—continued to teach for several years without being paid a single Afghani (Afghanistan's currency). Today, in Shughnan, a Teacher Training Centre (TTC) continues this legacy. In 2014, 720 students (a majority of them female) graduated, while classrooms in schools like Naswan, are full of attentive students. Much of the infrastructure, implementation and support for such a literate environment comes from the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), including here at the Naswan School for Girls. *NB. Some information for this post was sourced from an article written by Fabrizio Foschini and published by Afghanistan Analysts Network in 2012. Photo: @andrewquilty / Oculi for @everydayasia. 4.5.2015. #Shughnan #Badakhshan #Afghanistan #AKF #education #literacy #taliban #AAN #everydayeverywhere