Afghanistan’s Taliban ban all education for girls

Exclusion from primary school effectively ends education for girls and women in the country, as they continue to be squeezed out of public and professional life.

A woman walking with schoolgirls going to their primary school in Kabul earlier this year. Picture: AFP

The Taliban banned girls from attending primary school, effectively instituting a total ban on the education of girls and women and dealing one of the most dramatic blows yet to women’s freedoms since seizing power last year.

In a gathering in Kabul with private-school directors, clerics and community representatives, Taliban officials on Wednesday also barred female staff, including teachers, from working in schools, closing off one of the few professions that had remained open to Afghan women under the new government, according to school principals who attended the meeting. They also said adult women could no longer visit mosques or attend religious seminaries.

Ghulam Sarwar Haidari, a shopkeeper in Kabul, said his daughter Mahbooba was sent home when she arrived at the tutoring centre where she was attending classes in preparation for the coming semester in fifth grade. Mahbooba had hoped to study medicine and return to their home village in Ghazni province, where there are no female doctors.

“My daughter has locked herself in a room since this morning and won’t stop crying,” Mr Haidari said. “All her hopes are broken. We are tired to death of this situation, and only wonder when it will be over.” Wednesday’s announcement came a day after the Taliban government closed universities to women and further restricts opportunities for Afghan girls and women, who have been pushed out of public and professional life since the hard-line movement took power.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have banned university education for women nationwide. Picture: AFP

The ban on female education has drawn international condemnation and been an obstacle to the Taliban’s efforts to achieve international recognition for their government. It has been a key factor behind a US decision to impose sanctions on the Taliban and has impeded desperately needed financial assistance amid a calamitous humanitarian crisis.

The Taliban officials present at the meeting included representatives from the police, the national intelligence agency and the ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice. The Taliban didn’t make an official announcement on Wednesday. The ministries of education and higher education didn’t respond to requests for comment.

According to attendees at the meeting, the Taliban said the ban on girls’ schooling would be temporary. However, they also said a prohibition on girls’ education that they promulgated during their first rule in the 1990s was temporary, but never lifted the ban during their years in power.

The Taliban ordered girls' secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut just hours after they reopened in March. Picture: AFP

After the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021, they closed schools across the country. Most schools eventually reopened, but girls in secondary school were told to stay at home until conditions – which the Taliban didn’t define – were ready for them to return to classes. The announcement to return to school never came.

In addition to barring women and girls from education, the Taliban have imposed a raft of rules to govern female behaviour.

Women now need a male guardian to travel more than 48 miles, or to undertake basic tasks such as entering government buildings, seeing a doctor or taking a taxi. They are banned from nearly all jobs, except medical professions and, until Wednesday, teaching. Women also can no longer visit public parks.

The Taliban’s ban on education has caused rifts inside the movement where a relatively small group of diehard conservatives close to the group’s leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada have gained the upper hand over a younger generation of members that supports education for women and girls. Parts of the Taliban leadership have voiced public opposition to the ban.

Despite warnings from the Taliban that any dissent against the new order would be seen as defiance of Mullah Haibatullah, civil-society activists are planning to stage street protests on Thursday.

Fazil Rabi Askari, a 47-year-old father of three girls, said his oldest daughter had been struggling with mental-health issues since she was banned from 10th grade last year. Now his younger daughter in fifth grade, who dreams of becoming a pilot, has been sent home, too.

“Islam urges both men and women to seek knowledge. This act of the Taliban is clearly against the Islamic values and orders,” Mr Askari said.

The Wall Street Journal