The Taliban ordered girls’ high schools in Afghanistan to shut yesterday, just hours after they reopened, sparking heartbreak and confusion over the policy reversal by the Islamist group.
The U-turn was announced after thousands of girls resumed lessons for the first time since August last year, when the Taliban seized control of the country and imposed harsh restrictions on women.
The Afghan Ministry of Education offered no coherent explanation even as officials held a ceremony in the capital to mark the start of the new academic year, saying it was a matter for the nation’s leadership.
Photo: AFP
“In Afghanistan, especially in the villages, the mindsets are not ready,” ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan told reporters.
“We have some cultural restrictions ... but the main spokesmen of the Islamic emirate will offer better clarifications,” he added.
A Taliban source said the decision came after a meeting late on Tuesday by senior officials in Kandahar, the movement’s de facto power center and conservative spiritual heartland.
The resumption of school for girls had been announced weeks earlier by the ministry, with Rayan saying the Taliban had a “responsibility to provide education and other facilities to our students.”
However, the Taliban insisted that pupils aged 12 to 19 would be segregated — even though most Afghan schools are same-sex — and would operate according to Islamic principles.
Crestfallen girls at Zarghona High School in the capital, Kabul, tearfully packed up their belongings after teachers halted the lesson.
“I see my students crying and reluctant to leave classes,” said Palwasha, a teacher at Omara Khan girls’ school in Kabul. “It is very painful to see them crying.”
US Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights. Rina Amiri said the closing of schools “weakens confidence in the Taliban commitments.”
It “further dashes the hopes of families for a better future for their daughters,” she wrote on Twitter.
When the Taliban took over in August, schools were closed anyway because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but boys and younger girls were allowed to resume classes two months later.
However, there were fears that the Taliban would shut down all formal education for girls — as they did during their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
The international community has made the right to education for all a sticking point in negotiations over aid and recognition of the new Taliban regime, with several nations and organizations offering to pay teachers.
Students from Sadar Kabuli Girls High School staged protests after they were told to leave, witnesses and activists said.
“They left after the Taliban came and told them to go home. It was a peaceful protest,” a shopkeeper in the area said.
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