Education City, in Doha, Qatar, is a city in its own right. On a vast area, branches of renowned American, British and French universities and schools bring together tens of thousands of students. Cycle paths, libraries, canteens, dormitories… Here, everything is modern and impressive.
The Sholla building, a narrow white building, seems modest compared to those of the American faculties of Georgetown and the Ivy League or that of the Qatari Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Sholla is home to the American University of Afghanistan, in exile in the Qatari capital. She took with her the dreams of Afghan students, whom the Taliban, back in power in Kabul since August 2021, are depriving not only of the right to study, but also of all social life.
Within the establishment, in a corridor leading to the classes, the walls are covered with photos from before the Taliban offensive: we see young people, women and men, sitting on a lawn on the campus, in Kabul, in chatting, smile on his face.
American and Qatari financing
On this fall morning in 2023, around ten students are attending a mathematics course on solving quadratic equations, in English. From time to time, a voice comes from the computer on the teacher’s desk. These are students who are taking the course remotely, in Afghanistan. A young Afghan woman is called to the board, her classmates help her find the solution. Once the equation is solved, the teacher asks everyone to applaud.
Teaching was able to resume in Doha more than a year ago, in August 2022. Funded by Qatar and the American government, the establishment has one hundred and eighty-four students on site, including one hundred and eighteen women. , and some seven hundred registered for online courses in Afghanistan, to which are added three hundred and fifty high school girls, also deprived of school in their country, who are following literary and scientific preparatory classes remotely. The teachers, face-to-face or remotely, are of twenty-five different nationalities, mainly American and Afghan.
If the American University of Afghanistan was able to find a base in Qatar, it is firstly because this ally of the United States has been increasing initiatives for around ten years to establish itself as an essential mediator in the Afghan file. This is how the agreement on the American withdrawal from Afghanistan was signed, in February 2020, in this extremely wealthy little Gulf emirate. In the months following the fall of Kabul, Doha became the obligatory crossing point for all players who wanted to influence the region.
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