The Afghan government on Tuesday barred women from private and public universities, officials said. the 90’s.
The move is the latest sign that the Taliban leadership has cast aside any intention of moderation, and it is a realization of fears that 20 years of Western human rights and governance initiatives could be undone after the Taliban attacked last year. came to power. The new government has reinstated Sharia law in recent weeks, carried out public floggings across the country and carried out one public execution.
All of this likely threatens the influx of much-needed international aid that has kept Afghanistan from the brink of famine as it grapples with a devastating economic collapse.
Tuesday’s news, delivered in a letter from the Department of Higher Education and confirmed by the Department’s spokesperson to DailyExpertNews, was shattering for Afghan women who grew up in an era of relative opportunity but who have seen those rights are slowly being erased since the Western-backed government collapsed in late summer 2021.
In March, the new government reneged on promises to allow girls to attend public secondary schools, with officials saying they need more time to develop a plan for reopening in accordance with Islamic law. Many high school girls had harbored hopes that their schools would reopen as universities had continued to allow women to attend classes.
But Tuesday’s decision dashed any trace of those hopes.
“The university was the only window of hope for me, but today we are trapped in such a black hole,” said Sakina Sama, 22, a second-year university student studying journalism in northern Afghanistan’s Balkh province.
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan
Ms. Sama had worked in a photo and video studio under the previous Western-backed government. But she lost her job when the Taliban seized power and confined women to jobs, mainly in education and health care, where they served fellow women. Continuing her education has been her only joy since the Taliban seized power, she said.
“I have no hope or motivation left,” she said. “If being a girl is a sin and I was born a girl, it’s not my fault.”
19-year-old Farhanaz, who asked to be called by her first name only for fear of retaliation, said after the Taliban seized power last year, she almost lost her motivation to study when she watched the new government pour out a deluge issued edicts. women’s freedoms.
Girls were banned from high schools and women from public areas such as parks. The vice squad appeared on the streets and punished women who were not covered from head to toe in all-hidden burkas and headgear in public.
Farhanaz said she and her friends had held onto hope that the new government would eventually revert to its previous commitments to moderation and allowing women to keep a place in society, as officials sought international recognition for their government.
Then on Tuesday, a letter from Higher Education Ministry spokesman Hafez Ziaullah Hashemi began circulating on social media, instructing private and public universities to bar women from university classes until further notice. Mr Hashemi said the decision was made by the cabinet of the new government and ordered the universities to inform the ministry once they had dismissed all female students.
For Farhanaz and her sister – an 18-year-old who had just been accepted into a university psychology program – the news was devastating. She said her sister locked herself in her room, sobbing at the news.
“Now I don’t even have the motivation to survive,” said Farhanaz.
Western officials condemned the government’s action on Tuesday.
“This unacceptable attitude will have significant consequences for the Taliban,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a news conference in Washington. Mr. Price would not give details of what punishments the United States or its allies might impose.
As the world received news of the latest harsh government decision, another decision unfolded: Mr Price said that in what appeared to be a gesture of goodwill, Afghan officials had released two Americans detained in the country. . Mr Price did not identify the released Americans, saying their release was not part of a prisoner or prisoner swap and that no ransom or payment was involved.
The ruling on women’s rights was further evidence that ideological hardliners within the Taliban movement have exerted their influence on those who have pushed for moderation and engagement with the international community and commitment to the international community.
Since the first months of Taliban rule began in August last year, initial promises by officials to preserve women’s right to education and work have given way to increasingly conservative edicts, including from the Supreme Leader of the Taliban movement, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada.
Sheikh Haibatullah, based in Kandahar, the southern heart of the Taliban movement, has appointed allies to government posts — including the ministries of education and higher education — and has consulted ultra-conservative clerics.
In recent months, its allies have enacted policies including appointing thousands of religious scholars to government offices, waiving standard academic requirements for former Taliban fighters in universities, and implementing harsh interpretations of Sharia law that the first Taliban government enforced in the 1990s.
For many Afghans, the return to harsh justice was horrifying.
This month, Mohammad Shaker Hashimi, a truck driver in Charikar, a city north of Kabul, was awakened by the sound of announcements from loudspeakers urging residents to the city’s stadium at 9 a.m. for a “punishment ceremony.”
He walked to the stadium and joined a crowd of about 400 people, he said. After ordering the crowd not to take any photos or videos, local officials escorted 18 men with hands tied behind their backs and nine women dressed in cover-all blue burqas onto the field and separated them by gender.
Two judges gave a speech on Sharia law and explained the crimes of the prisoners: women were charged with running away from home and moral corruption, while the men were found guilty of theft, adultery and selling drugs, among other crimes, said Mr. Hashimi. Then the officials began whipping them — between 20 and 39 lashes each.
“When they were beating the women with cables, one of the women fell to the ground, and I couldn’t watch anymore and left,” said Mr. Hashimi.
He said a wave of hope brought by the end of the long war was bitterly undone in recent weeks, creating a sense of helplessness.
“In the past there were explosions and suicide bombings, and we thought the war and violence were over,” he said. But now, he added, “torturing people in public has resumed.”
Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Edward Wong from Washington.