In February, as part of a recruitment campaign, a television advertisement invited women aged between 19 and 35 with at least nine years of education (common in the larger cities) to join up. Only about 100 applied and, of these, 45 met the criteria (35 began training and six dropped out in the early stages). Suria Salay, 19, was one of them. 'When I saw the ad on television I was so excited,' she says. 'I was thinking about going to university to become a lawyer or a journalist, but this is a much better opportunity for me – I get to learn things here that I wouldn't learn anywhere else. The situation for young women in Afghan­istan is still bad – some families are open-minded but many just keep their daughters at home until they are old enough to marry.'