For additional than a decade, the Afghanistan Countrywide Institute of Audio has stood as a image of the country’s shifting id. The university experienced hundreds of youthful artists, numerous of them orphans and street hawkers, in artistic traditions that ended up when forbidden by the Taliban. It formed an all-woman orchestra that executed widely in Afghanistan and overseas.

But in new times, as the Taliban have been consolidating manage in excess of Afghanistan yet again, the school’s future has appear into doubt.

In interviews, numerous college students and lecturers reported they feared the Taliban, who have a record of attacking the school’s leaders, would seek out to punish men and women affiliated with the college as very well as their families. Some said they fearful the university will be shut down and they will not be authorized to engage in once again. Quite a few female learners reported they experienced been keeping inside their residences considering the fact that the cash was seized on Sunday.

“It’s a nightmare,” Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the college, said in a telephone job interview from Melbourne, Australia, the place he arrived final month for health care remedy.

The Taliban banned most types of music when they beforehand dominated Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001. This time, they have promised a additional tolerant strategy, vowing not to have out reprisals in opposition to their previous enemies and expressing that women will be authorized to get the job done and review “within the bounds of