Afghan children have returned to their schools in the beginning of a new academic year. But for girls beyond the 6th grade, education remains forbidden and out of reach, with only a tragic and uncertain future awaiting them.
In August 2021, the hopes and dreams of millions of Afghan schoolgirls were crushed by the Taliban’s interim government, which after taking control of Kabul and much of the country, banned young girls and women from education beyond the 6th grade. This draconian decision was met with huge uproar and backlash in the international community and the Taliban facing immense criticism and a stalled international recognition process, promised that the ban was temporary, citing security reasons. On March 21, 2022, the Taliban announced the reopening of all schools in Afghanistan, seemingly ending the ban. But two days later, even as many girls were enthusiastically preparing to return to school, the Taliban authorities reversed the decision and restricted girls over the age of 12 from attending state-run schools. In an attempt to divert and soften the loud international criticism, the Afghan Ministry of Education said the closure would be temporary and schools would be reopened once it put in place policies that would ensure compliance with “principles of Islamic law and Afghan culture”. Six months later, with no plan in place to reopen secondary schools to girls in the foreseeable future, the government issued a new edict and banned girls and young women in Afghanistan from higher education.
Even as the islamic world and most of its preeminent scholars declared that such anti-education edicts were against the very foundations of Islam, the Taliban leaders did not budge, nor did they listen. The ban continues in place today and another year slowly passes by in Afghanistan – without the presence of women and girls in schools, colleges and universities.
Millions of innocent Afghan schoolgirls continue to find themselves oppressed and deprived of their basic right to education, even as the human tragedy of Afghanistan has faded out of news headlines and out of the minds of the international community.
The Taliban’s abhorrent stance on education, defies both worldly and religious logic. Afghanistan, a post-conflict nation that has just emerged from the jaws of multiple protracted armed conflicts spanning four decades, needs all its human resources, both men and women, to work towards getting the country out of the economic abyss that it finds itself in. The Fall of Kabul in 2021, led to a mass exodus of Afghan professionals, resulting in an unprecedented brain drain at a very precarious time. The last thing that the nation needed was its new leaders to handicap it further and jettison any prospects of recovery by excluding half the population from participating in education and ultimately work, and thus nation-building efforts.
The exclusion of girls from education also contradicts the Taliban’s aim to build a gender-segregated society. How can women have dedicated healthcare when no female healthcare workers are trained in the country? According to the World Health Organization, 24 women died each day in Afghanistan from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes in 2020 – one of the highest rates in the entire world. While this statistic was a significant improvement from the situation in 2001 when the Taliban was last in power, experts fear that the situation is likely to get worse, and the Taliban’s diktats on curtailing women’s education in schools and universities are not helping either.
From the religious perspective, too, the Taliban leaders must realise that they are accountable before god for thrusting ignorance upon a generation of girls just so they can claim a perceived localised victory of tradition. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in their previous avatar from 1996 to 2001, the education of women was banned across the nation as were most of the avenues for their employment. This time, the Taliban gave public assurances that it would do things differently and avoid earlier pitfalls and mistakes. The people of Afghanistan believed it. They put their trust in the Taliban. This trust, this “Amanah”, is an asset the Taliban should value and not waste away in pursuit of meaningless political gains.The group that claims to follow the path of Prophet Muhammad, the Amin, the trustworthy, should not be seen to break the trust of the people.
The Taliban’s refusal to allow Afghan women and girls to receive an education is also a strategic mistake that stands in the way of the government’s efforts to gain international acceptance and find reliable partners that would support Afghanistan’s economic and structural development. The important geostrategic location of Afghanistan has led to it receiving a lot of political attention from major global and regional powers for much of its history. Oftentimes, this translated into protracted conflict and resulted in security issues overshadowing all global discussions and engagement with Afghanistan. If it is serious about bringing stability to and building a prosperous future for the country, the Taliban must endeavour to expand the global interest in Afghanistan beyond security and divert the agenda of global engagement with the country to issues of development. Such a change would not only create the conditions for international projects and initiatives that would create employment and alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans living in dire conditions but would also help end the international isolation of Afghanistan and pave the way for its integration into the rest of the world.
By allowing another academic year to pass without resolving the issue, the Interim Government in Kabul is demonstrating a worrying lack of capacity to work out what should have been a straightforward mechanism to create the conditions under which girls would be allowed back to school. Thus, it is signalling to the international community, including the Islamic World, that it cannot be trusted and is practically putting a block on any development-focused engagement that could put an end to its ongoing isolation. Any further procrastination on the issue will no doubt reflect negatively locally, regionally, and globally on the Taliban and on their efforts to demonstrate the applicability of political Islam to today’s development challenges.
It is high time for the Taliban to undo this egregious mistake and prove to its own people and the rest of the world that it is a trustworthy leader, and a responsible caretaker of the future mothers and daughters of its nation.
(With inputs from UN News and Al Jazeera)
