Opinion | Afghanistan’s ban on women’s education shows the Taliban haven’t changed
When the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996, they imposed a strict version of Islamic law, or sharia, that kept women out of schools and workplaces and shrouded them in clothing from head to toe. When the Taliban were driven out following the 9/11 attacks, the opening of university classrooms for girls and women was a singular achievement. It provided a window of opportunity for women like fawzia kofiwho, after 2001, was able to obtain a university degree in Pakistan and later became one of the most outspoken women in the Afghan parliament and a leading advocate for women’s rights.
Returning to power in August 2021 after a chaotic US withdrawal, the Taliban vowed to take a more moderate stance in governing the country. Does not have. Immediately after the announcement, the young women saw the gates of the university. slammed shut and Taliban guards blocking the way. Many educated Afghans who stayed after the withdrawal and hoped for a change are now likely to flee. The decision could lead to the proliferation of secret and prohibited study groups for women. Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim reclaimed the ban was necessary to prevent gender mixing in universities and because he believes that some subjects taught violate the tenets of Islam. This is a bullshit. What has really happened is that the hard line among the Taliban, those with the harsher ways of the Pashtun peoples, have triumphed over the more moderate voices and factions.
Afghan women have regularly held protests, but the Taliban have cracked down on such demonstrations in the past. College ban feels like a point of no return. . . . Homeira Qaderi, Afghan university professor and activist, saying BBC, “Afghanistan is not a country for women but a cage for women.” And the decision of the Taliban attracted condemnation Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with a Muslim majority. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “neither Islamic nor humane” and added: “What harm is there in women’s education? … Our religion, Islam, is not against education; on the contrary, it promotes education and science.”
On Saturday, the Taliban took another step to restrict women, barring them from working for non-governmental organizations, both domestic and foreign.
In September, the United States Announced that some $3.5 billion in previously frozen reserves from Afghanistan’s central bank will be transferred to a new fund in Switzerland to benefit the Afghan people, keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban. Afghanistan is still mired in an economic and humanitarian crisis, and those needs must be met, but the United States and its allies must make no mistake: The Taliban regime clings to the old, primitive approach to women, cruelly extinguishing their hopes and future. .