Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have banned university education for women nationwide, provoking condemnation from the US and the UN.
Despite promising a softer rule when it seized power last year, the Taliban has ratcheted up restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives.
“You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,” Taliban Minister for Higher Education Neda Mohammed Nadeem said in a letter issued to all government and private universities.
Photo: AFP
Ministry spokesman Ziaullah Hashimi, who posted the letter on Twitter, confirmed the order in a text message to reporters.
Washington condemned the decision “in the strongest terms.”
“The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all in Afghanistan,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “This decision will come with consequences for the Taliban. No country can thrive when half of its population is held back.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply alarmed” by the ban, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said on Tuesday.
“The secretary-general reiterates that the denial of education not only violates the equal rights of women and girls, but will have a devastating impact on the country’s future,” Dujarric said in a statement.
The ban on higher education comes less than three months after thousands of girls and women sat for university entrance exams across the country, with many aspiring to teaching and medicine careers.
The universities are on winter break and are due to reopen in March.
After the takeover of the country by the Taliban, universities were forced to implement new rules including gender-segregated classrooms and entrances, while women were only permitted to be taught by female professors or old men.
Most teenage girls across the country have already been banned from secondary-school education, severely limiting university intake.
Journalism student Madina, who wanted only her first name published, struggled to comprehend the weight of Tuesday’s order.
“I have nothing to say. Not only me, but all my friends have no words to express our feelings,” the 18-year-old told reporters in Kabul. “Everyone is thinking about the unknown future ahead of them. They buried our dreams.”
The country was returning to “dark days,” said Rhea, a medicine student in the capital who asked that her name be changed.
“When we were hoping to make progress, they are removing us from society,” the 26-year-old said.
Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and his inner circle of Afghan clerics are opposed to modern education, especially for girls and women, but they are at odds with many officials in Kabul, and among their rank and file, who had hoped that girls would be allowed to continue learning following the takeover.
“There are serious differences in the Taliban ranks on girls’ education, and the latest decision will increase these differences,” a Taliban commander based in northwest Pakistan said on condition of anonymity.
In a cruel U-turn, the Taliban in March blocked girls from returning to secondary schools on the morning they were supposed to reopen.
Several Taliban officials said that the secondary education ban is only temporary, but they have also wheeled out a litany of excuses for the closure — from a lack of funds to the time needed to remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.
Since the ban, many teenage girls have been married off early, often to much older men of their father’s choice.
Several families interviewed last month said that, coupled with economic pressure, the school ban meant that securing their daughters’ future through marriage was better than them sitting idle at home.
Women have also been pushed out of many government jobs or are being paid a slashed salary to stay at home.
They are also barred from traveling without a male relative and must cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa.
Last month, they were prohibited from going to parks, funfairs, gyms and public baths.
The international community has made the right to education for all women a sticking point in negotiations over aid and recognition of the Taliban regime.
“The international community has not and will not forget Afghan women and girls,” the UN Security Council said in a statement in September.
However, Pakistan, Afghanistan’s neighbor, on Tuesday said that engagement with the Taliban was still the best path forward.
“I’m disappointed by the decision that was taken today,” Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on a visit to Washington.
However, “I still think the easiest path to our goal — despite having a lot of setbacks when it comes to women’s education and other things — is through Kabul and through the interim government,” Zardari said.
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