A young Afghan woman has fled her country rather than accept a forced marriage, escaping in a taxi from a nation where the Taliban has banned girls from receiving an education beyond primary school. The woman, identified only as Alia to protect her identity, said that if her family did not force her to get married she would wait, and that she would resist until the situation changed. Her determination to pursue education despite the Taliban's restrictions represented the quiet resistance of millions of Afghan women and girls denied access to schooling since the group returned to power. The Taliban's ban on girls' secondary and higher education has been condemned by the United Nations, human rights organisations, and governments worldwide as one of the most extreme restrictions on women's rights anywhere in the world. Afghanistan is the only country on earth that officially prohibits girls from attending secondary school, a policy that has devastated the aspirations of an entire generation. Alia's journey out of Afghanistan highlighted the desperate measures young women are taking to avoid forced marriages and pursue the education the Taliban has denied them. Her story was one of countless similar accounts of Afghan women risking everything to escape a system that has systematically stripped them of their fundamental rights since August 2021.