AFGHANISTAN: The screensaver on 18-year-old Nabila Akbari's desktop computer shows a spectacular sunrise, and with just a few clicks on the mouse she replaces it with bright spring tulips.
The Kabul University student hopes that she is part of a new beginning in war-ravaged Afghanistan, where less than two years ago a young woman like her would not have been let out of her house, let alone into a classroom to study information technology.
Yesterday, Nabila became one of the first 17 Afghans trained in their own country to earn industry standard certificates in computer networking skills.
More than two decades of war have meant that Afghanistan was largely bypassed by the IT and Internet revolution. A UN-supervised programmeaims to create a core of specialists to take the country into the digital age.
"My personal goal is to share this knowledge with other Afghans, especially Afghan women," said Nabila. "Men should allow women to learn."
Under the fundamentalist Taliban regime, which fell from power in late 2001, women were banned from all forms of education and forbidden to venture outside their houses without cover-all burqa garments.
Such restrictions have been relaxed under the the western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, but women's rights are still significantly curtailed, especially in the provinces.