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Kabul, Afghanistan -Rahela Nussrat, a resident of Kabul, 17 years old, is in the final year of high school, but she cannot attend classes. The reason: the new ruler of Afghanistan decided to temporarily deny girls to school.
Last month, the Taliban announced the start of school, but only asked boys to return to school, while excluding girls of the same age. This move raised questions about the organization’s policy on women’s education.
The Taliban stated that “a safe learning environment” is needed before older girls return to school, adding that the school will reopen “as soon as possible”, but did not give a timetable.
Nusrat told Al Jazeera: “Education is one of the most basic human rights, but today, I and millions of other Afghan girls have been deprived of this basic right.”
During the administration of Western-backed President Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan has been trying to get girls back to school. According to 2015 Polls According to the World Education Forum’s preparation for UNESCO, nearly 50% of Afghan schools lack usable buildings.
On September 19, 2021, when Afghan women held a demonstration in front of the former Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul, they held placards and talked with Taliban fighters when they demanded better rights for women. [File: Bulent Kilic/AFP]more than 2.2 million Just last year, Afghan girls could not go to school-60% of the country’s out-of-school children.
The Taliban’s ambiguity in reopening secondary schools has compounded the problem and has hit millions of girls, especially those whose families believe they can return to their normal lives after the war.
“When the Afghan government collapsed, I lost the right to education. This was the first time I cried because of my gender,” Nusrat said.
She said that she still doesn’t understand the reasons why only teenage girls can’t receive education, but she is sure that if it continues, it will only have a counterproductive effect on the Taliban.
“They keep saying they want young people to stay and use their talents, but they just drove us out,” Nusrat said by phone from his home in Kabul.
Thousands of Afghan youth fled the country after the Taliban regained power on August 15, 20 years after they stepped down in a US-led military invasion.
Nusrat used herself as an example, saying that she is currently preparing for the English test in order to apply for the opportunity to study abroad.
Nusrat comes from Dekundi, one of the poorest provinces in the country, where even boys dropped out of school and started working as part-time workers when they were adolescents. He said that the Taliban are losing generations of motivated and determined young people.
“I studied in Kabul for 14 years. I went to elementary and middle school during the war, but now I have to leave the country,” she said.
“I will apply to universities abroad, and other countries will accept me and my talents because they know that it is impossible to study in Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban.”
The Taliban’s position on girls’ and women’s education has been criticized by Qatar and Pakistan, which call on the international community to engage with the Taliban.
in a Press conference Last month, Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, stated that the Taliban “is very disappointed to see some steps backwards.” The Taliban was the only one to ban women and women in the 1990s. The leader of girls’ education and employment. In the history of Afghanistan.
Sheikh Mohammed said that Qatar is the seat of the Taliban’s political office and should be used as a model for how Muslim society operates. “Our system is an Islamic system [but] We have more women than men in the labor force, government, and higher education. “
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said that although he suspects that the Taliban will once again completely ban girls’ education, he should remind the organization that Islam will never allow this to happen again.
“The idea that women should not be educated is not in line with Islamic teachings. It has nothing to do with religion,” Khan told the BBC.
Before the arrival of the Taliban, cultural traditions were used as a basis for some families to keep their girls, especially older girls from going to school. According to UNICEF, 33% Of Afghan girls were married before the age of 18.
Aisha Khurram, a law graduate student at Kabul University, said she was not convinced that the Taliban would allow Afghan women to play a meaningful role in Afghan society.
Women holding banners during a demonstration in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, September 6, 2021 [File: Courtesy of Shamshad News/via Reuters]Since coming to power, the Taliban have sent mixed signals about women returning to work in government offices and forced universities to formulate gender segregation policies to reopen.
Kulam, a former youth representative of the United Nations, said that she does not think it is necessary to distinguish between genders in Afghanistan’s premier higher education institution.
“I have always known that Kabul University provides an inclusive and inclusive environment for female students,” she said.
Although it is difficult for her to reconcile it with her education experience in Afghanistan, Khurram said that gender segregation should not be used as an excuse to prevent all Afghan women from receiving education, as the Taliban did in the 1990s.
Other women interviewed by Al Jazeera said that although the separation of men and women has received a lot of social media attention, it should not be the focus of people who really want to see Afghan men and women get educational opportunities.
Pashtana Durrani, an education advocate who focuses on bringing digital learning tools to rural areas, said that for millions of women across the country, gender distinction is not as important as foreign media and certain residents of Kabul say.
“In many parts of the country, gender segregation is the norm. People are used to it. Even in Kabul, weddings are separated by gender,” Durani told Al Jazeera in the southern province of Kandahar.
Durrani believes that for many families, gender segregation may be the key to allowing their eldest daughters to enter university. He said that even before the Taliban took over, girls in public and private universities in Kandahar wore Arabic-style robes and veils, “because boys They will be nearby.”
However, Khurram, a law student, said that although Afghan women agreed to these new rules on apartheid, the Taliban failed to achieve their trading goal of opening schools.
“The Taliban’s commitment has not been confirmed in their actions. They have not yet accepted that Afghanistan has changed,” since the organization’s short five-year rule in the 1990s.
On Monday, the Secretary-General of the United Nations criticize The Taliban’s “destroying” promises to Afghan women and girls refer to the continued closure of schools.
Durani said that the most important thing for Afghan girls and women is that they can learn without interference from the Taliban.
“At this point, for these girls, everything has to do with education. Even if they have to sit at home after they get married, they just want a diploma, a piece of paper to show what they can achieve,” Dura Ni said of the young women she had spoken to in Kandahar.
She said that even the female principals she talked to in three different schools in and around Kandahar City were worried about her future, even though she said everything was ready and all girls could return to school.
The Taliban has ordered that only female teachers can attend girls’ high schools. Only when there are insufficient female teachers are older male teachers allowed.
Durrani and others worry that trying to prevent girls from getting an education is just the first step towards bigger and more dangerous things.
There is a lack of women in the cabinet, and Taliban officials’ judgments on women’s dress and perfume are seen by many Afghan women as a harbinger of worse things.
“This is a way to break the strong chain. First, you don’t allow girls to receive education, so that they have no job skills. Unknowingly, you have deprived an entire generation of the right to be part of society.”
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