Afghanistan: Taliban close schools for teenage girls soon after reopening

teenage girls Afghan they returned this Wednesday to secondary schools seven months after the taliban they will take power; But hours after classes resumed, Islamist leaders sent them home in a sudden policy shift that sparked outrage.

The Afghan Ministry of Education did not give any clear explanation, despite the fact that, in the capital, the authorities had even organized a ceremony to mark the start of the new course.

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“On Afghanistanespecially in the villages, mentalities are not prepared”spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Aziz Ahmad Rayan, told the press.

According to a Taliban source interviewed by AFP, The decision would have been made after a meeting of senior leaders held on Tuesday night in Kandahar (south), the cradle of the fundamentalist Islamist movement that de facto governs the country.

critics

Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzaiwinner of the Nobel Peace Prize and long-time campaigner for women’s education, also expressed his outrage.

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The taliban “They will continue to find excuses to prevent girls from learning because they are afraid of educated girls and self-governing women,” said Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Pakistani Taliban when she was 15.

The director general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, considered that the decision to deprive young women of classes constitutes “an enormous setback”.

“Access to education is a fundamental right”, he added.

The United States criticized the Islamists’ decision.

It is “a betrayal of the public commitments that the Taliban leadership made to the Afghan people and the international community,” State Department spokeswoman Ned Price said.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said in a statement that she “shares the deep frustration and disappointment of Afghan high school and female students.”

And he considered “deeply damaging” for Afghanistan the “inability of the de facto authorities to respect their commitments.”

The international community made the schooling of women a fundamental point in the negotiations on aid and recognition of the Islamist regime, which in its previous mandate (1996-2001) had prohibited female education.

cries

An AFP team was at Zarghona College in Kabul, one of the capital’s largest schools, when a teacher came in and ordered everyone to go home. Downcast, the students tearfully gathered their things and left.

“I see my students crying and reluctant to leave the class”, said Palwasha, a teacher at Kabul’s Omra Khan Women’s College. “It is very painful to see your students cry,” she added.

When the taliban they took power in August, schools were closed due to the covid-19 pandemic, but only boys and girls in primary education were able to resume classes two months later.

“Responsibility”

For Andrew Watkins, an Afghanistan specialist at the US Institute for Peace, this shift reflects a split within the Taliban leadership.

“This last minute change seems to be motivated by ideological differences within the movement […] about how their supporters will perceive the girls going back to school”he told AFP.

The taliban They had claimed that they needed time to ensure that girls between the ages of 12 and 19 were well separated from boys and that the centers were run according to Islamist principles.

“What will be our future?”

There were also families who distrusted the taliban and they were suspicious of letting their daughters go out, or that they did not see the point of educating women in the face of a bleak future job.

In seven months of government, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions on women, who have been excluded from public jobs, controlled in the way they dress or prevented from traveling alone outside their city.

The fundamentalist regime also arrested several activists who had demonstrated for women’s rights.

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Source: Elcomercio

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