After banning girls from most secondary schools for the past 16 months, the Taliban have also banned women from university education this week. “They destroyed the only bridge that connects me to the future,” a Kabul University student told the news portal. “How should I react? I believed that studying could change the future or bring light into my life, but they destroyed it.” Authorities issued the order on Tuesday, and the next day, other educational institutions, including Islamic religious schools and private universities in several states, also issued rulings. Sources in her three provinces – Takhar in the north, Ghazni in the southeast, and the capital Kabul – confirmed to the BBC that the Taliban had prevented girls from attending private education centers. All avenues of formal education for women seem to be closed. This prompted some women to dare to protest on the streets of Kabul on Wednesday. This is a dangerous act given the Taliban’s record of arresting protesters. Small demonstrations were quickly put down by Taliban officials.
This generation considered themselves the lucky generation whose mothers, sisters, and cousins were uneducated. The Taliban, which began as a radical Islamist extremist group, pushed for women’s rights when it came to power last August after a previous scare of its rule from 1996 to 2001 when women were unable to work or study. I promised to respect you. Girls’ education has long been a point of contention between conservative and more moderate factions within the Taliban. The university ban now marks a victory for the Taliban fundamentalists, whose supreme leader Hibatullah Akunzada believes modern education, especially for women and girls, is wrong in Islamic doctrine. But not everyone in the ruling movement thinks like him. There are also reports that more moderate officials in cities like Kabul want girls over the age of 12 to be educated.
As human rights defenders have warned, this decision will affect the future of the entire country. US Secretary of State Anthony Brinken warned that “no country can prosper if half the population is suppressed.” Western powers have required women’s education as a condition if the Taliban wants to gain global recognition. But the Taliban have so far ignored the criticism. But for many observers in Afghanistan, trying to explain the Taliban’s actions in terms of Islamic teachings makes no sense. They say the university ban is merely a continuation of the movement’s goal of utterly oppressing women and wiping out the freedoms they enjoyed during the Taliban’s rule. By closing the door to college education, the Taliban are perfecting their control over women. “Afghanistan is not a country of women, it is a cage of women,” said Humayra Qaderi, a US-based Afghan academic, and activist. “There is no more social life for Afghan women. The streets are now dominated by men. “It was the last thing the Taliban could do. But they did.
