Issue of: September 18, 2022 – 08:52

On September 18, 2021, weeks after the Taliban seized power last August, hardline Islamists reopened all-boys high schools, but middle school girls were not allowed to attend classes. has been banned.

A few months later, on March 23, the Ministry of Education opened a secondary school for girls, but within hours Taliban leaders ordered classes closed again.

Since then, more than one million teenage girls across the country have been deprived of education, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

“This is a tragic, shameful and completely avoidable anniversary,” UNAMA Executive Director Markus Potzel said in a statement.

“It will seriously damage the future of a generation of girls and Afghanistan itself,” he said, adding that the ban is unique in the world.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on the Taliban to withdraw the ban.

“Lost knowledge and opportunities will never come back,” Guterres said on Twitter.

“Girls should go to school. The Taliban have to put them back in school.”

Some Taliban officials have said the ban is only temporary, but they have offered a flurry of excuses for the shutdown, from lack of funds to the time required to rebuild the syllabus in line with Islamic lines. rice field.

Earlier this month, the education minister was reported to have told local media that this was a cultural issue, as many rural people did not want their daughters to attend school.

After seizing power amid a chaotic withdrawal of foreign troops on August 15 last year, the Taliban promised a more flexible version of the harsh Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Within days, however, they began imposing strict restrictions on girls and women to follow Islam’s strict vision. effectively shut them out of public life.

Besides closing high schools for girls, the Taliban have banned women from holding many government jobs and have ordered them to cover themselves in public, preferably in full-body burqas.

Some girls’ high schools continue to open in provinces away from the central power base in Kabul and Kandahar, due to pressure from families and tribal leaders.

© 2022 AFP