The newly-established Taliban regime has forbidden girls from attending secondary school in Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate issued a decree ordering male teachers and students to resume their education, excluding Afghan girls from schools.
“Teenage Afghan girls weren’t allowed to return to school on Saturday as classrooms across the country reopened for the first time since the Taliban took power last month,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Friday’s decree goes against Taliban previous statements allowing girls to pursue their education in gender-segregated classrooms. Female Afghan students could attend segregated universities if they comply with the “Islamic dress code,” Taliban Education Minister, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, declared last week. Those promises now appear to have been revoked.
British newspaper The Guardian reported the exclusion of Afghan girls from secondary education:
The Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys.
Girls were not mentioned in Friday’s announcement, which means boys will be back at their desks next week after a one-month hiatus, while their sisters will still be stuck at home.
The Taliban education ministry said secondary school classes for boys in grades seven to 12 would resume on Saturday, the start of the Afghan week. “All male teachers and students should attend their educational institutions,” the statement said. The future of girls and female teachers, stuck at home since the Taliban took control, was not addressed.
The edict makes Afghanistan the only country on earth to bar half its population from getting a secondary education.
The Taliban is waging a real war on women since it took control of Afghanistan a month ago. The Islamist militia is demanding Afghan families to give their daughters as young as 15 as wives to Taliban fighters.
Earlier this month, the Taliban Special Forces used live ammunition to break up a women’s rights march in Kabul. “Taliban special forces in camouflage fired their weapons into the air (…), bringing an abrupt and frightening end to the latest protest march in the capital by Afghan women demanding equal rights from the new rulers,” TV channel France24 reported.
The recent steps taken by the Taliban have dashed the naïve hopes of many in the mainstream media and the left of seeing an “inclusive” rule in Afghanistan.
In a latest move, the new Islamist regime has disbanded the minister of women’s affairs, replacing it with the department of moral police.
News agency Reuters reported the dismantling of women’s ministry:
Workers in the Afghan capital Kabul replaced signs for the country’s women’s ministry with those for the Taliban’s moral police on Friday, as female former employees of the department said they had been locked out of the building.
A sign for the building was covered by a replacement in a mixture of Dari and Arabic, reading “Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” on Friday, according to photographs and Reuters witnesses.
Female employees said they had been trying to come to work for several weeks only to be told to return to their homes, according to videos filmed outside the building seen by Reuters.
The gates of the building were finally locked on Thursday, one of the women said.
The new department, probably modeled on its Iranian counterpart, will mete out severe punishments to enforce Sharia law. During its previous rule, the Taliban stoned women to death for defying the Islamic dress code.
Germany’s DW News: “Taliban whip women protesters and beat journalists covering protests”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY