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 hard-line Islamist group, whose rule barred women from education, could once again become part of the government.

"They say they have changed, but I have concerns," she said in an interview in her office in Kabul. "There is no trust ... we don't want peace to come with women losing all the achievements of the last 17 years."