‘I daren’t go far’: Taliban rules trap Afghan women with no male guardian

A woman and her children in Kabul. Some women are forced to rely on their young sons to fulfil the role of their ‘protector’. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Hasina* cannot send her two daughters to school, because they are teenagers and high school is banned for girls in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

But she cannot take them out of the country to finish their education because she is a divorced single mother, and women are barred from long-distance travel without a male “guardian” to escort them.