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Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have banned university education for women nationwide, as they continue to crush rights to education and freedom.
Despite promising a softer rule when they seized power last year, the Taliban have ratcheted up restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives, ignoring international outrage.
The country’s Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, issued a letter to all government and private universities instructing for the rule to be enforced.
“You all are informed to implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,” it read.
The spokesman for the ministry, Ziaullah Hashimi, who tweeted the letter, confirmed the order in a text message.
The ban is just the latest in a series of restrictions as the Taliban has increasingly cracked down on female freedoms.
It comes less than three months after thousands of girls and women sat university entrance exams across the country, with many aspiring to choose teaching and medicine as future careers.
The universities are currently on winter break and due to reopen in March.
Although women had been allowed to continue their university education following the Taliban takeover on August 15 last year, it was provided that they learned in segregated classrooms and covered themselves according the group’s interpretation of Sharia law.
Women were also only permitted to be taught by women professors or old men.
But the months following saw women banned from attending classes at Kabul University, in the nation’s capital, as an ‘Islamic environment’ had not yet been created.
Young girls were also excluded from returning to secondary school , severely limiting university intake.
Several Taliban officials say 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 time needed to remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines. — Daily Mail.
Even funfairs and gyms have become no-go areas for women due to the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s rights.
While Afghan women had fought for and gained basic rights in the past 20 years, millions have now been forced to stay at home and abandon their ambitions.
Many teenage girls have been married off early — often to much older men of their father’s choice.
Women have been pushed out of many government jobs — or are being paid a slashed salary to stay at home.
They are also barred from travelling without a male relative, and must cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa.
Journalism student Madina, who wanted only her first name published, struggled to comprehend the weight of today’s order.
She said: “I have nothing to say. Not only me but all my friends have no words to express our feelings.
“Everyone is thinking about the unknown future ahead of them. They buried our dreams.”
The country is returning to the “dark days,” added medicine student Rhea in the capital, who asked that her name be changed.
Despite today’s ban, it is claimed that many officials in Kabul are at odds, with some having hoped 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 told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Washington has condemned the decision to ban women from university ‘in the strongest terms.”
“The Taliban should expect that this decision, which is in contravention to the commitments they have made repeatedly and publicly to their own people, will carry concrete costs for them,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington.
The United Nations is also “deeply concerned” by the order, said Ramiz Alakbarov, UN chief’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan.
“Education is a fundamental human right. A door closed to women’s education is a door closed to the future of Afghanistan,” he tweeted.
In the 20 years between the Taliban’s two reigns, girls were allowed to go to school and women were able to seek employment in all sectors, though the country remained socially conservative.
The authorities have also returned to public floggings and executions of men and women in recent weeks as they implement an extreme interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
An economic crisis in Afghanistan has only worsened since the Taliban returned to power following the hasty withdrawal of US-led foreign forces last August.
Washington froze $7 billion of Afghanistan’s assets held in the United States while billions in foreign aid that helped prop up the country has vastly reduced. — Daily Mail.
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