Afghan women sceptical over Taliban’s promise on education after new decree to universities

After a lightning military campaign to win the majority of the country, the Taliban promised to form a lenient form of government in Afghanistan that would deliver on certain rights, including for women, that were missing from their first rule. However, nearly 20 days after they took over Kabul, various statements by the Taliban suggest expecting a reformative government would be unlikely.

After promising to allow women to continue their studies, the Taliban introduced many riders from time to time. Initially, the militant group had said they would allow women’s education under the limits of Sharia law, or Islamic law, without revealing any details. Later, when the details started emerging, Afghan women feared the situation under Taliban 2.0 would be no different from the 90s.

Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting minister for higher education met with elders, known as a loya jirga, on August 30. After the meeting, he declared that women would be allowed to study at universities but there would be a ban on mixed classes under their rule.

Taliban’s decree to universities

According to the Guardian, the Taliban have issued a decree to private universities, laying out a list of prescriptive rules to prevent male and female students even glimpsing each other’s faces during years of study.

According to the Taliban’s list, women would be provided a bus for travelling to university. The bus would have covered windows and a curtain separating them from the presumably male driver. Between classes, they would be confined to a ‘waiting room’.

The decree even requires female students and teachers to wear black clothing in college.

To keep male and female students apart, a ‘Sharia partition’ must be erected for current classes with girls under the age of 15, the decree states. Same-gender teachers would be allowed to teach students, the new rules say.

‘In the future, all universities should provide female teachers for women’s classes. They should also try to use older teachers with a good background,’ the Guardian quoted the letter.

An Afghan woman speaks with a member of the Taliban during a protest in Herat on Thursday. (Photo- AFP)

With fewer female students and lack of space in educational institutions, teachers fear it would be difficult to abide by the Taliban’s new decree, thus forcing women and girls to drop out.

‘We heard some of these explanations in 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban said that the reason girls couldn’t study and women couldn’t work was because the security situation wasn’t good, and once the security situation was better they could go back. Of course that moment never arrived,’ the Guardian quoted Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, as saying.

‘This indicates that even in the 1990s the Taliban felt the need to disguise some of their misogyny. So this is not an entirely new communications strategy they are pursuing now and Afghan women can see that,’ she added.

Women hold protest

Worried about the Taliban trampling their rights, women staged two protests in the last couple of days in Herat and Kabul. Bearing placards and raising slogans, the Afghan women demanded that they be allowed to pursue education and hold jobs.

“We are here to ask for our rights,” Fereshta Taheri, one of the demonstrators, told AFP. “We are even ready to wear burqas if they tell us, but we want the women to go to school and work.”

While Afghan women have also pressed for rights such as representation in administration and electoral rights, education remains their primary concern.

Some women told the Guardian that they have already given up on their education over fear of the Taliban’s new rules and their brutal past. ‘I don’t believe the Taliban. I’m scared of their rules and I’m concerned to lose my life for no reason under their control,’ a female student told the Guardian, who lived in a hostel while studying in Kabul.

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‘I had a plan to accelerate my studies and take more classes. I went to the gym after university. I had a plan to launch a small business for myself in Kabul, but everything vanished in a matter of hours. Words cannot describe my current depression,’ she added.

Unofficial accounts of women quoted by the Guardian reveal that the Taliban have reintroduced the requirement for a male guardian, or mahram, to accompany them in any public space.

How women were treated in Taliban’s first rule

When the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, their strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law – sometimes brutally enforced – dictated that women could not work and girls were not allowed to attend school.

Women had to cover their face and be accompanied by a male relative if they wanted to venture out of their homes. Those who broke the rules sometimes suffered humiliation and public beatings by the Taliban’s religious police.

(With inputs from the Guardian)

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