Herat (Afghanistan) (AFP)

Like princesses who leap over elves and launch their daggers against wizards in the video games they make, Afghan coders want to inspire a generation of young women in a fiercely patriarchal Afghanistan.

These geeks are taking part in an evening training, Code To Inspire, in Herat, capital of western Afghanistan. They learn the technique and create educational games and applications for girls in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Their greatest achievement was the release this year of "The Afghan Heroine", made in six months by a team of twelve young women. In the smartphone application, a princess wearing a green veil circulates in a castle in ruins to defeat a wizard and save his family.

Fereshteh Forough, a computer science teacher and former refugee, founded Code To Inspire in 2015. According to her, students were fed up with the absence of female characters in the video game industry and were bored with "playing games where men are superheroes ".

"The Afghan heroine" embodies "the challenges and obstacles that women face every day in Afghanistan, and despite all setbacks, they continue to struggle and move forward," said Ms. Forough, now based in New York, in an exchange emails with AFP.

In a country where educational opportunities for girls are limited, internet access is uncertain and women face discrimination on all occasions, computer literacy can transform things, thinks she.

Like many Afghan women, Fereshteh Forough is concerned about a possible return to power for the Taliban, under which women were not allowed to work and were confined to their homes during the 1990s.

"By learning to code, you can work remotely safely from your home, if you have internet," she says.

"The work we are doing ... is about equality, empowerment and change so that these young women can contribute to their communities and advocate for social, political and economic equality," she adds.

- "Get educated faster" -

Women's rights and girls 'education have made significant progress since the fall of the Taliban nearly two decades ago, but challenges remain with frequent insurgent attacks on girls' schools and threats to female students .

The Afghan conflict, now in its 19th year, has led to the closure of more than 1,000 schools in 2018, according to Unicef, denying the right to learn 500,000 children, about 60% of whom are girls. "In the worst-case scenario, if the Taliban limits women's rights to work, computer literacy can enable them to do so at home," says Forough.

Games and applications are educational or fun. Some include memories of coders or even true stories.

For example, in the game "The fight against opium", the soldiers are deployed in the province of Helmand (south), where there are many fields of poppy. It is inspired by the story of the military brother of a coder who was deployed there.

"My main goal as a game and application developer is to release as many girls' educational games as possible," says Nasri Wahidy, a Code To Inspire student.

"We want girls to learn and educate faster through games."

One of them teaches young Afghans the geography of their country by showing them where the provinces are.

The school has taught more than 150 students so far how to code programs, make games and applications, and develop websites.

"They will become digital citizens of a world without geographical boundaries," predicts Fereshteh Forough.

str-EMH-wat-pcl / jf / dp

© 2019 AFP