Rights return to Afghan women. (International).

On the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, girls are going somewhere they haven't gone in nearly six years--to school. The country's Taliban government had banned girls and women from learning, working, and even showing their faces in public. Now that the Taliban have fled, after relentless American air strikes and pressure from Northern Alliance soldiers, women are welcoming the return of their basic human rights.

Under Taliban law, all women were required to wear a burka--a head-to-toe garment with a small patch of netting over the eyes. No woman could leave home unless accompanied by a male relative. Women could not laugh loudly, show their ankles, or ride bicycles. Wearing nail polish or jeans, even beneath a burka, could provoke a beating with a steel cable.

The Taliban based their laws on their interpretation of the Koran, the holy book of Islam. But many Islamic scholars call the Taliban's ideas extreme and misguided. The burka, for example, is a traditional garment in many parts of Afghanistan. Many women willingly wore it long before the Taliban took power, and many will continue to wear it. But for other Muslim women, the choice to wear it or not is a precious freedom.

"We respect the Islamic dress code, but what the Taliban imposed on Afghan women, such as wearing the burka, is based only on the Taliban's Islam," Amina Safi Afzali, a representative of the Northern Alliance, has said.

Some women risked their lives to show the world the Taliban's cruelty. They hid video cameras beneath their burkas to film public whippings and executions of women. Others risked death by educating girls in underground schools.

Professor Yacoobi (who asks that her first name not be used) organized the Afghan Institute of Learning, a string of underground schools for girls in Afghanistan, as well as schools in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Why did she take the risk? "When you make education available to Afghan children," she says, "it is like giving them new life and new hope for the future."

Learning and speaking out were not always so dangerous for Afghan women. Before 1996, when the Taliban took power, women held seats in Parliament. They also made up half of university students, 40 percent of doctors, and 70 percent of teachers.

Today, such women seek a new role in helping to create a more open government. But bringing reform to Afghanistan will not be easy. Years of war and drought have made even survival difficult. And ethnic tensions continue.

Dr. Lynn Amowitz of Physicians for Human Rights recently spent six weeks in the region. She says the women she met told her, "Look, I have no food and no shelter. We've had 23 years of war, and I can't plant my field because of drought. The Taliban were not the cause of all my problems."

But the return of their basic human rights could give the women of Afghanistan a chance to help rebuild their country. One of the first steps will be returning to school, even though most schools-if they're still standing--have few desks, books, or pencils. Still, Amowitz says, "People are much more hopeful. They're starting to smile a bit more."