Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the country has faced spiralling economic and humanitarian crises.

Some three quarters of the government budget was previously funded by international donors, and the loss of aid money – coupled with billions of dollars in assets frozen by foreign powers – has contributed to skyrocketing food and fuel prices, as well as widespread hunger.

Such poverty was what led Mohammad Taher to accept the job as a guard at the Kaj institute that cost him his life, when he knew that attacks on similar centres had led to more than 80 deaths already over the previous two years.

Gholam Sakhi, Taher’s brother-in-law, confirmed that it was the economic downturn that had forced Taher to accept the risky work: “Of course he was frightened, but he needed the 8,000 afghani [$90] salary to feed his grandchildren.”

And even though the residents of Barchi fear for their lives, explained Sakhi, they can’t afford to move: “Every morning, when we leave our homes, we say our prayers, because we don’t know if we’ll make it back home alive.”

In the 1990s, when they first ruled Afghanistan for five years, the Taliban was accused of massacres against Hazara populations – in the Yakawlang district of Bamiyan province and in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif.

This time around, the Taliban have tried to project a more tolerant image. Shortly after returning to power, Taliban officials attended Ashura commemorations in Shia places of worship. They also made an effort by stationing hundreds of their security forces in various parts of the city, including Barchi, during the two Ashura commemorations that have taken place since they took back power last August.

However, a year ago they were once again accused of killing Hazara members of the former Afghan National Security Forces and of seizing the lands of Hazara residents in the central province of Daikondi.

Whereas the Taliban has tried to cultivate an image of acceptance of all Afghan people, forces pledging allegiance to IS, which has been responsible for the vast majority of the attacks in Barchi, have been very clear in their targeting of the Shia population. Because the majority of Hazaras are Shia, they have become a prime target for the group, which has been engaged in a bitter and violent rivalry with the Taliban since 2014.

On Saturday morning, outside the entrance to the Italian-run Emergency Hospital in the Shahr-e Naw neighbourhood, Khair Mohammad was waiting on word of his sister Fatema and his niece Nazdana, both of whom he had not seen since the attack. He said one of the girls suffered an injury to her lung. Mohammad himself escaped a similar fate last year, when his own testing centre was attacked on a day he left early.

“Something inside me said to delay for another day,” Mohammad said. “Had I not convinced my instructor, I could have been like my sister and my niece. Or worse.”

Mohammad, whose family moved to Kabul from Daikondi, one of the least-developed provinces in Afghanistan, said the danger of life in Barchi is not lost on the residents.

Inside the Maiwand wrestling club, a popular institution in the Barchi community where 30 people were killed and a further 50 wounded in a September 2018 suicide attack claimed by IS.

“Where does it end? They attack our mosques, but they cannot keep us from praying,” he said of a string of attacks over the last year on Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, and Sikh places of worship in Kabul, Kandahar, Kunduz, and Herat. “They attack our schools and institutes, but we must study. They attack us on the roads, but still we go about our lives.”

Sakhi, the brother-in-law of the slain guard, said the Taliban government is not alone in having ignored the unique threats faced by Afghanistan’s minorities. He noted that the leaders of the former Western-backed Islamic Republic, including those who came to power with the Hazara vote, also failed to address the worsening situation in Barchi.

“Whoever was in power, no one has come to ask us what our life is like,” he said. “Not the parliamentarians [of the previous government], not the old leaders.”

The fact that most of the victims of the Kaj attack were young women speaks to the challenges of pursuing an education in Taliban-led Afghanistan. Since the takeover, men and women across the country have been calling on officials to re-open secondary schools for teenage girls in 32 of the nation’s 34 provinces.

Kaj was not the first such institute in the capital to come under attack. In 2020, at least 43 people were killed at the Kawsar-e Danesh tutoring centre. Last year, another 40 people were killed in the Mawoud Academy.

In spite of the violence, some survivors remain undeterred. In the wards of the Mohammad Ali Jinnah Hospital in Barchi and the Emergency Hospital in Shahr-e Naw, where most of those who survived Friday’s blast are being treated, wounded young women insisted they would not let the attacks stop them from pursuing an education.

Sharifa, 21, is one such survivor. On Saturday, she was lying in a bed in the Jinnah Hospital, still recovering from the physical pain and mental anguish. In the bed across from her lay Fatima, another victim who was too distraught to speak.

Relatives of both girls pushed them to talk to volunteers from Aseel, an e-commerce platform turned aid organisation that is distributing financial assistance packages to the families of the victims.

Finally, at her family’s behest, Sharifa managed to utter a few pained words.

“Nothing will stop us,” she began to say, before breaking down. Trying to calm her down, Fatima’s mother turned to Sharifa and said: “Now is the time to be brave, you aren’t the only one who has gone through this. You have to speak up.”

Collecting herself, Sharifa delivered her full message to all the teenage girls of Afghanistan who feel their chance at higher education might be denied by violence and government policies: “Nothing can keep us from our education, not the violence and not the enemies.”

• The New Humanitarian report