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Home Women Business News The Taliban's Grip On Females Tightens, Some Women Fight Back

The Taliban’s Grip On Females Tightens, Some Women Fight Back


The Taliban’s grip on the restrictions of women continues to tighten. With the latest Taliban-appointed head of Kabul University saying that women will be banned from the institution as either students or instructors.

“I give you my word as chancellor of Kabul University,” Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat wrote in a Tweet on Monday. “As long as a real Islamic environment is not provided for all, women will not be allowed to come to universities or work. Islam first.”

The latest university policy is reminiscent of what the Taliban did while they were in power beginning in the early 1990s. An archaic time when women were banned from schools, and were forced to be accompanied by a male relative in public and were physically beaten if they disobeyed.

And just a few weeks ago, Afghan women’s rights activists held protests calling on girls to be allowed to attend secondary school after the Taliban called for only male students and teachers to return to secondary school. The protest was organized by the Movement for Change Party, a women’s civil society movement led by Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan Member of Parliament, and peace negotiator that spoke via webcam outside of Kabul. 

“The Taliban during and before the negotiations said in their statements that women have the right to work and study according to Islamic law, but today what is going on in Afghanistan are against the promises Taliban made and against Islamic values. How is it possible you believe in religion and not follow it? The first Holy Verse of the Quran presented to Prophet Mohammad is (IQRA) meaning ‘READ’, how are you banning a generation from reading and writing, it is not a social matter that groups of humans are banned from study, life, and freedom,” Fawzia Koofi said.

The Taliban Ministry of Education ordered only male students and teachers from the 6th to the 12th grade to report to their schools on Saturday. The announcement, issued on Friday, did not mention female students at all, sowing fears that girls would once again be excluded from secondary education.

Under the Taliban regime, women have become excluded not only from education but also from work. Yesterday, Koofi went to France to meet with the French PM to thank the people and government of France for their historic friendship but also for economic support to aid the people, especially the women of Afghanistan who lost their jobs and income under the Taliban government.

The Taliban have denied claims that Afghan women would be completely banned from secondary schools after calling on boys, but not girls, to resume education, claiming they needed to set up a “secure transportation system” for female students before allowing them back into classrooms.

“Today we hear that girls are not allowed to get an education, the offices’ doors are shut in their face, there is no woman representative in the political leadership, this shows that Taliban still do not believe in the rights of women, they should know that only by the respect and participation of women, they can live in peace and this world. They should not forget that most of the international community is monitoring and are focused on Afghanistan issues,” Koofi added during the video conference.

Koofi plead to the international community and the UN to pressure the Taliban to back-track from the decision on banning girls and women from education and work.

“I hope the international community and especially the United Nations will put strong pressure on the Taliban, and we will continue with our civil activities. I request and call on parents, boys, and girls, that girls should go to school, open their school gate, and teachers should go to school and open the gates of schools as a sign of respect,” added Koofi.

Axana Soltan, is devastated by what is happening as she recently told ForbesWomen. Soltan is an Afghan-American lawyer and founder of the NGO, Enhancing Children’s Lives Org, focused on providing Afghan children with education, advocacy, meals, and medical care. Soltan immigrated with her family to the U.S., but continued to be active in helping children in her native Afghanistan. She said her country is rapidly crumbling and harkening back to the dark time when women were repressed from accessing the ability to have an education that was fought so hard to end. 

“This all means that the Taliban have not changed. This means that the vows the Taliban have made to protect Afghan women and to honor their rights were false. We may be returning to the ‘dark days’ again, back to the 1960s when females could not be educated and were stripped of their basic human rights. During that time, schools were open only for males and students could not be taught by a female teacher,” says Soltan.

Soltan’s organization has remained committed to advocating for the education of Afghan women and children. “Even amidst the difficulties that Afghanistan is facing, we will find the means to provide long-term support for girls’ education. We will find the means to ensure that girls and boys have equal access to education,” Soltan said.

In 2015, her organization implemented a special educational system that allowed children from inside Afghanistan to get a virtual education. As of right now, the goal is to expand access to that system so more girls can have access. The organization is also working towards advancing the app so it functions through any device and without a need for Wi-Fi. 

“So many girls will have to bury their dreams and aspirations because the future that was promised to them is slipping away from them. In the past two decades, millions of Afghan women received an education and worked toward making progress and rebuilding the country. Over the years, there has been enormous progress in improving Afghanistan’s literacy rates for women. Now, a whole generation of Afghan women who have grown up with rights and freedoms could potentially lose those hard-won gains.”

In recent weeks, countless blows have been dealt to with the Afghan education system that had been uplifted for the past 20 years largely due to the injection of millions of dollars in foreign aid, but with the Taliban’s recent return to power, it is rapidly faltering.

In 2014, Soltan’s NGO established a women’s library and social café for Afghan girls, because “Afghanistan is the world’s most illiterate country in the world. Our library was called Afghan Girls Roaring Louder Than A Lion and its mission was to empower the next generation of Afghan girls to find their voice through literacy,” says Soltan. Offering thousands of collections and hosting literacy programs too. 

Since its inception, they provided literacy to over 6,000 women in Afghanistan. “Our library became a refuge for hundreds of women and girls who learned how to read and write,” explains Soltan. 

But on May 8, 2021, their library was destroyed. “At the Sayed Al-Shayedah school, our library was destroyed in a bombing. A car bomb was detonated in the neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi and then two more explosions occurred near the girl’s school in Kabul. The initial explosion was a car bomb followed by two IEDs. The attack left at least 90 people dead and 240 injured. It was reported to us that 3 of those girls were our students.”

One of their team members on the ground who was active in helping their most vulnerable children in Kabul was killed in the Kabul Airport attack bombing, Najma Sediqi. A young and vibrant 20-year-old journalism student in her final year at the Institute of Kabul. She had a passion for public service and was committed to helping the street children of Afghanistan. Najma had helped organize and distribute coats to hundreds of children living in the streets of Afghanistan. 

“Najma was killed by the Taliban. She tried to escape Afghanistan, but couldn’t. Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans that were desperately trying to leave Kabul airport and Najma was one of the victims that were killed. Najma was killed in a terror attack outside Kabul’s international airport as she was trying to desperately flee the country,” says Soltan.

It is despite the life-threatening risks that the teachers of Kabul continue to show up for their students. A.T. is a teacher based in Kabul who is risking his life for the good of his students. (I am using his initials for his safety as teachers are getting daily death threats from the Taliban, threats to their lives, because they continue to teach.)

“Despite the threatening messages that we receive individually, and our school receives, we still go to work every single day. Every morning before I leave for work, I hug my family a little tighter. I kiss my kids goodbye because I do not know if I will return home safely,” says A.T.

“But when the news broke that girls were not going to be able to attend school with male classmates, it was heartbreaking. It was a shame for our country. As teachers, we felt like this was the biggest loss for our country. We felt we failed. We felt like giving up. The future that we promised to these little girls is being taken away from them. We feel helpless and guilty to proceed with teaching only boys. What keeps us moving right now is that there is still a little hope. We are still waiting for the government to release its final decision that girls cannot go to school. As of right now, we are still hopeful that there may be a chance for girls to be accommodated somehow. While there may be challenges for girls, we are willing to commit to educating males and females equally.”

As of now, A.T. says that he and other teachers remain hopeful. They have to for their students.

“There may be a chance for girls to be accommodated somehow. While there may be challenges for girls, we are willing to commit to educating males and females equally,” A.T. said. 

“When we get to school, we don’t tell our students about how we feel. In front of them, we act happy. We instill hope in them and we remind them that there is hope for tomorrow. Our country will be in peace again. Everything will be okay. We cannot lose hope.”





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