Women's Studies: How 19 female medical students brought from Afghanistan became a symbol of hope

Zahra Hussaini talks to her mother at least once a day – more if she has the time.

It has been seven months since the medical student arrived in Scotland to pursue the education she had been cut off from in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Enrolled at the University of Glasgow, she is preparing for exams during her pre-med year and hopes eventually to become a heart surgeon. 

Hussaini’s mother, a psychologist and educator, was “very, very happy” when confirmation of her place came through. But the family, including Hussaini’s younger sisters and brother, remains in Kabul, where the fundamentalist group’s takeover in summer 2021 has led to wholesale restrictions on the rights of women and girls. Education is out, as is employment, and while women are barred from receiving medical treatment from men, no training is now given to ensure there are enough female medics to meet the population’s needs. Even midwifery courses are now closed.

After defiant early protests calling for “bread, work, freedom”, women are prohibited from showing their faces outside the home, from speaking in public, from taking part in sport, and even now from being seen through windows. With travel without a male chaperone also outlawed, what independence there is can be found online, Hussaini says, and apps like Instagram help her stay connected. And she has much to share about her new life in Scotland, where she says “everything is different”, even the animals. “In Afghanistan they are so noisy, here even the sheep are quiet,” she says. “They stand there for so long without moving, I had to ask someone if they were dead.”

But when she uploads Instagram videos to share with friends and family back home, she is careful about the content because of the jarring contrast in their lives. “Sometimes I don’t want to share a story about my university or the new environment because I feel really guilty about my former classmates, my friends,” she says.

Hussaini and friends were met at Edinburgh Airport by John and Lorna Norgrove and ministers from the Scottish and UK governments

Hussaini had already started university in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, when the edict came to close the classrooms to women. Despite the Taliban’s history, the immediacy and scale of the rollback on rights “was unexpected and shocking for everyone”, Hussaini says.

Her lifeline was a unique programme by the Lewis-based Linda Norgrove Foundation, which secured agreement from the UK and Scottish governments to bring 19 female medical students from Afghanistan to continue their learning. The group, which includes women from across Afghanistan, landed at Edinburgh Airport in August and the students are now enrolled on courses in Aberdeen, Dundee, St Andrews and Glasgow, where six others live with Hussaini in student accommodation. 

Thanks to differences in the education systems, all have had to restart their medical training, and all have made sacrifices to be here, with some leaving partners behind. One prospective student, a mother, pulled out of the scheme because she could not bear to leave her young child. For Hussaini, it means missing her brother, three sisters, and parents. “I talk to my mother now more than I did in Kabul,” she says.

It took years of campaigning by the Linda Norgrove Foundation to make the initiative a reality.

The charity works to uphold the values and memory of the Scottish aid worker who was killed in a failed mission to rescue her from the Taliban in October 2010. Run by her parents John and Lorna, who travelled to Afghanistan in the 1970s, the organisation funds education, health and childcare work, and so this effort to bring a score of students to Scotland was outwith its usual scope. As such, it is not planning a repeat, John Norgrove tells Holyrood. That’s despite the massive media interest in the women’s arrival in 2024, which was a PR win for the governments involved, with the media invited to cover official receptions attended by ministers.

We were beginning to give up hope

Initial hopes were that the women could use the UK Government’s Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) to come over. The Boris Johnson-era pathway was supposed to provide access to safety for as many as 20,000 people, prioritising “vulnerable” people including women and those who had assisted British authorities in Afghanistan before the withdrawal that heralded the Taliban’s seizure of government. By the end of September, just 12,400 had been accepted onto the scheme and, instead of using this route, the foundation secured student visas for the 19 women. It was only possible because the Scottish Government amended funding regulations to allow them to be treated as home students, entitling them to support with fees and accommodation.  

“We are a small charity with limited funds and staffing capacity and the key aim of the foundation has always been, and continues to be, to fund projects that support women and children who remain in Afghanistan,” Norgrove says. “It’s also important to us that the 19 students who travelled to Scotland last August continue to receive our attention and support.

“Identifying the pathway that would allow the students to travel to Scotland to complete their studies was challenging and time consuming.  

“After almost two and a half years of campaigning we were beginning to give up hope.  It was only when we were told by the Scottish Government that there was to be an amendment to the fees and student support regulations that we were able to really start working with the Scottish medical schools, the Scottish Government, and the Secretary of State for Scotland’s office to make this a reality for these 19 students.

“Now that the legislation allows for Afghan women who have been barred from higher education in their home country to access funding support in Scotland, assuming they have been offered a place at university, it would be great to have somewhere to point people so they can also follow a similar process.”

The women are enrolled at four universities. Image: Contributed

It’s something that weighs on Hussaini’s mind. Originally from Bamiyan province, where Unesco status failed to prevent the destruction of the ancient Buddha statues in the Taliban’s early-2000s drive to eradicate pre-Islamic iconography, Hussaini is part of the Hazara people on whom so much brutality has been focused over generations. Persecuted for their ethnicity and religious views, Hazara children have been subject to suicide attacks on their schools and colleges. In the years between periods of Taliban rule, the community’s rates of enrolment were high and helped to improve its fortunes, with rates of participation for girls particularly high.

Between her own study sessions, Hussaini now teaches English online to former university classmates. “One of them had a very good idea,” she says. “Coming to Scotland or the UK can be very difficult and expensive, but other Asian countries could provide these girls with facilities.” She gives Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as examples and says the UK and other western nations could partner with governments there to support provision for Afghan women which would not only be closer to home for them, but delivered in a mother tongue and with fewer culture barriers.  

But the UK Government has cut its Overseas Development Assistance budget to put more money into defence as tensions over Russia and Ukraine rise. Resigning as international development minister, Anneliese Dodds told Keir Starmer that reducing that spend to 0.3 per cent of gross national income will make it “impossible” to maintain UK priorities on vaccination, climate and rules-based systems. It is as yet unclear how the cut – the largest in history – will impact delivery on the ground, but the UK provided £113.5m for humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan in 2023-24, using UN agencies and charities to provide assistance for more than 2.7 million people in a population of more than 41.4 million. 

Speaking at a Scottish Parliament event organised by the charity Glasgow Afghan United in December, Fawzia Koofi – the first female deputy speaker of parliament in Afghanistan and a former peace negotiator with the Taliban – called for more “practical steps” to support women and girls, asking that more female students be helped to enter Scots universities. “They target education because they want to keep society in darkness,” she said of the Taliban, calling the presence of the Norgrove 19 “a huge hope for those who think the whole world has abandoned them”. 

And Hussaini is clear that she too is speaking out to be a voice for Afghan women. “I really wanted to leave,” she says. “Even now, if I open Instagram and see some videos about Afghanistan, they are all very positive and talking about the beauty of Afghanistan, the environment, and it is true, it is very beautiful. But when I do not have the freedom to live as a human being in Afghanistan, when I’m not considered to be a human being, it’s better not to live in that country.

It’s crucial that the Scottish and UK governments continue to push

“There should be a way to put the Taliban under pressure to open schools and universities to girls. Otherwise, millions of girls’ lives and futures are now being wasted.”

Attending the same event as Koofi in the Scottish Parliament, First Minister John Swinney spoke of “the absolute centrality of education as a force for liberating influence in the world” and said he was “so proud that joint work with the universities and with the United Kingdom government” had enabled support for the “courageous” Norgrove students. And, preparing to welcome them to an International Women’s Day event in Edinburgh, Scotland Office minister Kirsty McNeill said that meeting them had been a “highlight” of her time in office. “It’s fantastic to see them thrive at our universities as they continue their medical studies.

“The determination of the Linda Norgrove Foundation to bring these women to Scotland to complete their degrees was unwavering and their safe arrival here marked the culmination of months of cooperation between the charity and the Scottish and UK governments. By working together, we achieved so much in ensuring their safe passage here.” 

But there are currently no signs that another 19 women will have the chance to follow them. John Norgrove said he would be “very happy to advise other individuals and organisations who would like to support Afghan women complete their studies in Scotland”, in hopes that someone will take up the baton. “There is a lot of ‘news’ at the moment,” he says. “Some is very important and some a distraction. It’s crucial that the Scottish and UK governments continue to push to improve the rights of women in Afghanistan and not let this drop off the agenda.

“Women and girls in Afghanistan have had their lives so unbelievably restricted.”