Taliban declares war on smartphones
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For many students, a phone is a classroom and a library. They use it to photograph lessons written on the board, receive assignments, download books, search for academic materials, use dictionaries and contact instructors outside class. For girls and women barred from secondary school and university, it can be one of the last ways to keep studying privately.

In Kandahar, the provincial Education Department said its own ban on students and teachers was rooted in a "sharia perspective" and warned that smartphones risked "the destruction of the future generation." The Taliban's higher education minister has called smartphones "one of the three main enemies of Muslims" and last October restricted their use on university premises to only the most senior administrators.

What could be lost

For many Afghans, however, the phone is not destroying their future. It may be one of the few tools they still have to protect it.

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