Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Composite: Guardian Design; Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock; Wahidullah Kakar/AP View image in fullscreen Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Composite: Guardian Design; Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock; Wahidullah Kakar/AP Immigration and asylum Sara won a prized place to study medicine in Glasgow. Why is the Home Office blocking her? She fought every obstacle in Afghanistan to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor – fleeing her abusive father and the Taliban. But this talented, tenacious student has now been denied a visa, for contradictory reasons, three times
Diane Taylor Thu 29 Oct 2026 19.02 CET Last modified on Thu 29 Oct 2026 19.03 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google F or the last decade, Sara (not her real name), 25, has dreamed of becoming a doctor. She secured a highly sought after place to study medicine at Kabul University in February 2021, but in a matter of months the Taliban returned to power and imposed a ban on women studying for degrees. Sara had been searching for other options. Then the University of Glasgow offered her a lifeline.
Her visa application was made just days before the Home Office introduced a visa brake in March 2026 for students from Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar and Cameroon. Her teachers consider her to be an exceptionally able and dedicated student, she had secured funding and the university was waiting to welcome her on to a gateway course at its school of medicine, dentistry and nursing – a route to a full degree course to become a doctor. So why have the UK’s home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and her officials gone to such extraordinary lengths to bar her?
View image in fullscreen ‘Challenge after challenge’ … Sara still wants a career in medicine. Photograph: Supplied image Sara says her life has been “challenge after challenge”. She survived a suicide bomb attack on her school, swerved her father’s attempts to force her into early marriage, as well as the omnipresent Taliban who patrol Kabul’s streets. Then she made a nail-biting escape from her country and avoided capture by police in Pakistan who were searching for her. But it is the UK’s Home Office , which champions women’s rights, that has inflicted the deadliest blow.
Sara grew up in a poor household in Kabul in the period before the Taliban regained power. Against the wishes of her violent father, who wanted to see her follow the traditional path of teenage marriage and a life of enforced domesticity in service to a husband, she fought to continue her education, encouraged to aim high by inspirational female teachers at her single-sex school.
“The community I come from is a particularly traditional one,” she says. “Even among my relatives I couldn’t find any girl who has been educated. While boys were free, my mum, who has always supported me, was told by relatives that rather than pursuing an education I needed to go somewhere where I could be taught to cook. After a relative’s daughter got married I was told I was next in line.”
But at school, she saw that life could be different. “I was about seven years old when one of my teachers first encouraged us girls,” she says. “Later, my physics teacher was also very supportive. She said that we would face challenges but should never give up in pursuing our dreams.”
View image in fullscreen Taliban soldiers in Mazar-e-Sharif, 2023. Photograph: EPA Sara says that she is still in contact with some of the girls she was at school with, who w…