I recently spent three months in Kabul working for a small NGO that promotes girls education called the Oruj Learning Center. I saw the consequences.

Fewer and fewer families are willing to risk their daughters' safety sending them to school. In the provinces girls generally have to walk long distances to get to their school and that, in itself, is often a life-endangering act. Moreover, throughout the country the schools themselves -- especially girls' schools -- have been targeted by insurgent forces. Two of four schools with which my organization worked were burned down last fall.

Recently schools with which Oruj partners have experienced increasing dropout rates. The explanation most often articulated by both the girls and their families is 'the lack of female teachers.' As female students mature, the girls and their families feel increasingly uncomfortable facing a male teacher with their faces uncovered. Unfortunately, this perpetuates a cycle in which female students rarely graduate high school in the provinces. Therefore few females become qualified to act as teachers in girls' schools for the next generation.

While local development organizations share the rhetoric of their human rights-based and gender-conscious donors, in practice they neglect women. Why? Most Afghans perceive human rights and gender equality as contradictory to their own indigenous interests and beliefs. Development organizations see this happening but fail to modify their strategies. Sustainable change will occur only when Afghanistan's citizens initiate, rather than simply receive, tools for development.

Ali Rose is a graduate student at American University. She won our PostGlobal On the Ground Competition this month for best student submission.