According to the residents of Herat province, the shortage of healthcare personnel is evident across all districts and nearby villages because after the suspension of American health organizations’ activities, many health centers have ceased operations, not only in Herat but across other provinces as well.

"They took her as the second wife; and I no longer had a mother." Maryam, a twelve-year-old girl from the Andar district of Ghazni province, tearfully recounts: "They took my mother. They said her husband was dead, and now she 'belongs' to a Taliban fighter."

In a world full of human rights slogans, education is still not a right but a conditional privilege for many children, especially girls. For Afghan girls, this privilege is now more threatened than ever before, both under the shadow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and under the sunlight of discrimination in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Two systems, two ideologies, but one shared goal: the systematic denial of Afghan children’s right to education.

The darkness of the Taliban’s cruel restrictions has cast a black, heavy shadow over little Mahtab’s life.