Afghan School with All-Female Orchestra Fears Taliban Return

For more than a decade, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music has stood as a symbol of the country’s changing identity. He has trained hundreds of young artists in the artistic traditions once banned by the Taliban, and formed an all-female orchestra that has performed widely in Afghanistan and abroad.

In recent days, however, the school’s future has been in doubt as the Taliban have reaffirmed their control over Afghanistan.

Many students and teachers said in interviews that they feared that the Taliban, who had a history of attacking school leaders, would try to punish those linked to the school and their families. Several schoolgirls said they have stayed in their homes since the capital, Kabul, was captured on Sunday.

Some said they were worried that the school would be closed, that their dreams of becoming a professional musician might be crushed, and that they would not be allowed to play again, even as a hobby.

“It’s a nightmare,” school principal Ahmad Naser Sarmast said in a phone call from Melbourne, Australia, where he came for medical treatment last month.

The Taliban banned most genres of music when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. They promised a more tolerant approach this time, vowed not to retaliate against their former enemies, and said women would be allowed to work and work. The limits of Islamic law.”

However, their history of violence against artists and their general intolerance to music that has no religious significance has cast doubt among many artists.

“My concern is that the people of Afghanistan are deprived of music,” said Mr. Sarmast. “It will be an attempt to silence the nation”

The school’s tradition of defiance made it a target. In 2014, Mr. Sarmast was injured by a Taliban suicide bomber who infiltrated a school play. Mr. Sarmast said the Taliban tried to attack the school again in the following years, but their attempt was thwarted.

Now, female students say they are concerned about a return to an oppressive past where the Taliban abolished schooling for girls and banned women from leaving the house without male guardians.