Shireen was the principal of Warda’s school, the largest girls’ school in Kabul and the headquarters of the Afghan Girls Scout Association, boasting expansive playing fields spanning more than five acres.
Her late father had been a general in the elite Special Forces of the Afghan army. He maintained the king’s intimate confidence and protected him from intrigues within the court as well as tribal uprisings in the provinces. A devoted military tactician, he instructed a generation of Afghan officers in both conventional and guerilla combat. He had three children, two of whom went abroad for higher studies and subsequently settled there. Shireen, the brightest of the lot, relished the military way of life and decided to stay with her parents.
Her favorite pastime involved studying tactical and strategic military planning in her father’s private library, as well as following the lives and achievements of renowned statesmen and military leaders who left a lasting impact on society. The general and the older members of his staff noted that Shireen gradually developed a tough demeanour assimilated with courage, integrity, and loyalty to her people. Her father would often quip that she should have been a boy.
She frequently visited the firing range, where she trained with a variety of weapons, including handguns, machine guns, hand and rocket-propelled grenades, and more. In addition, she received training in improvising explosive devices from Bekobod, a retired Uzbek sergeant, without her father’s knowledge, in a hidden workshop within the palatial residence. The sergeant was gifted with fabricating such lethal gadgets and had spent the greater part of his career in the general’s service.
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He continued to live as a trusted aide in the guard’s barracks, and after the general’s death, a year before the monarchy ended in 1972, the twenty-eight-year-old Shireen asked her former trainer to relocate to the school she was heading and take on the role of a sports coach and head of security. Above all, though, he served as her bodyguard for the remainder of her life.
The general bequeathed Shireen a sizable estate in the capital, along with an extensive collection of his personal arsenal.
Shireen revamped the Afghan Girls Scouts Association. She got along well with the socialist government in Kabul and received funding for the nation’s Women’s Advancement Program. The central government regarded women’s education and their greater representation in state matters as a necessary component of a socialist society.
Most political parties, including the radical Islamic groups founded at Kabul University in the 1970s, revered Shireen’s father because of his commitment to the defence and security of Afghanistan and his contempt for political intrigues and manoeuvres.
Members of these religious groups were more educated, and the leaders were younger than their counterparts in the rural areas. Many knew Shireen at the university, and their reaction to her ventures was initially mild. She managed to convince them that her primary goal was the education and priming of the Afghan woman according to the doctrines of Islam. Her narrative highlighted historical instances of Muslim women who cultivated social improvement while abiding by the standards of propriety and liberty established by their faith. In the heat of combat, many attended to the injured while others were accomplished religious scholars.
Her school was an academic hub for girls, with a strong focus on athletics and physical health.
Then the Soviets came, and life changed forever.