Shabana Basij-Rasikh was no stranger to risk. At age nine, under the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education, she disguised herself as a boy—cutting her hair and donning her brother’s clothes—to slip into a secret school in Kabul’s alleys. “Learning was worth the danger,” she recalls, her voice steady with the memory of furtive lessons by candlelight.
Raised in a family of educators—her mother a school principal, her father a community organizer—Shabana absorbed early on the transformative power of knowledge. After the Taliban’s fall in 2001, she enrolled at Middlebury College in Vermont, one of the first Afghan women to study abroad. Yet even as she delved into international relations and comparative literature, her heart stayed tethered to Afghanistan’s battered landscape. During vacations home, she volunteered at rural schools, teaching girls to read under the shade of mud-brick courtyards.
In 2009, while still a student, Shabana co-founded the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA)—the country’s first boarding school exclusively for girls. Operating on a shoestring budget and fueled by volunteerism, the school opened with twenty scholarship students from provinces where female literacy hovered below 10 percent. Tuition, room and board, and all-female faculty were provided free, a radical model in a society where families often distrusted outside educators .
From its ramshackle beginnings—a converted guesthouse near Kabul University—SOLA grew, adding dormitories and classrooms with proceeds from modest fundraising dinners held in Washington and London. By 2015, the school served over 150 girls aged 11–18, drawn from remote districts where roads washed out in winter. Alumni reports showed academic gains on par with private boys’ schools—proof that, given equal resources, Afghan girls could thrive.
Shabana’s leadership style was hands-on. She taught literature, warded off bureaucrats demanding bribes for permits, and negotiated with local elders for safe passage through volatile districts. Her motto: “We don’t just educate girls; we build community trust.” On weekends, she escorted students home for family visits, turning risks into opportunities for dialogue about the value of girls’ schooling.
Then came August 2021. As Kabul fell to the Taliban, SOLA’s campus lay in the crosshairs of a collapsing state. Shabana orchestrated a harrowing evacuation: securing charter flights for students and staff through back-channel contacts in the U.S. Embassy, coordinating visas in Doha, and chartering buses under the cover of night. When the last convoy crossed into Pakistan’s Balochistan province, she had evacuated 250 souls—students, teachers, and their families—to safety in Rwanda .
The Rwandan government, recalling its own post-genocide recovery, welcomed SOLA as a partner. Within weeks, Shabana reestablished the school near Kigali, recreating its dormitories in converted villas and resuming classes for the evacuated cohort. Lessons continued online for those still stranded, sustaining an educational lifeline across continents.
By 2023, SOLA in exile educated over 300 Afghan girls, many of whom went on to full scholarships at universities worldwide. Their fields of study—medicine, engineering, public policy—mirrored Shabana’s vision of equipping graduates to rebuild Afghanistan when peace returned. Alumni formed an informal network advising the Afghan diaspora on women’s rights, digital entrepreneurship, and trauma-informed teaching methods.
Shabana’s work earned global recognition: Forbes named her one of “10 Female Education Champions,” and the World Economic Forum appointed her a Young Global Leader. Yet she measures success in quiet milestones: a student’s first published essay, a family convinced to let their daughter board at SOLA, or a vocational workshop that taught sewing to displaced women—providing both income and dignity.
Today, Shabana splits her time between Kigali and Kabul, planning SOLA’s return to Afghan soil. She advises the U.N. on girls’ education in crisis zones and mentors nonprofit leaders worldwide on crisis-resilient schooling. Her latest initiative partners SOLA with solar-powered learning labs—shipping container classrooms that can be set up in remote valleys, ensuring education endures even amid renewed conflict.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh’s journey—from secret classrooms in Taliban-ruled Kabul to global stages—reminds us that leadership is forged in adversity. By daring to teach the toughest-to-reach, she has lit beacons of hope across continents, proving that when girls learn, nations can heal.
