KABUL (Reuters) - Eighteen years ago, at the height of the Taliban's power in Afghanistan, Roshan Mashal secretly taught her daughters to read and write alongside a dozen local girls who smuggled school books to her house in potato sacks.

Mashal's daughters have since gained university degrees in economics and medicine. But she now fears the looming prospect that the hardline Islamist group, whose rule barred women from education, could once again become part of the government.