In Kabul and much of Afghanistan, girls could not legally attend high school for nearly a year due to the Taliban ban. Officials insist the decision is only temporary, but have not set conditions or a timetable for lifting it. The ban caused a wave of depression and anger inside Afghanistan and widespread revulsion beyond its borders. It also caused less immediately visible splits within the movement itself, reflecting deeper rifts among former rebels struggling to adjust to the rule of a government. It is an open secret that many senior members of the leadership educated their own daughters while living outside Afghanistan – mostly in Pakistan or Qatar – during their 20-year struggle against US forces and their Afghan allies. Some continued to do so secretly, even after returning to Kabul, including the family whose international schooling plans were shared with the Observer. Less elite members of the movement are looking for options closer to home. A clandestine girls’ school in the capital has enrolled the daughters of four or five Taliban families in grades seven through 12, a senior official said. A Talib official came to personally request a larger-than-usual discount, and teachers told him about the others, he said. “I was scared and also happy that he and the others are kind of invested in the other kids at the school now and they’re going to stand up for us and support us.” In the private commitment of some Taliban members to secure an education for their own girls at any cost, other Afghans see both hypocrisy and some hope for change. It is likely to be a long battle, however, because opposition to female schooling comes from the top of the Taliban movement. Several Afghans with knowledge of the Taliban leadership, both inside and outside the movement, described the decision to ban girls from school as coming directly from the supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his inner circle. Haibatullah, or his close allies, ordered one of the harshest moments of the past year, they said, when high school girls who had been summoned in March to resume classes were ordered to go home immediately after showing up for the first day of classes. courses. Taliban fighters fire in the air to disperse women protesting against the ban in Kabul. Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images “This is the attitude of a minority, which is in a very powerful position,” said a well-connected Afghan source. Diplomats and Afghans with leadership ties said the education ministry was indeed planning to return the girls to schools, with preparations including checks that the facilities meet Taliban standards for segregated classrooms. The ministry was blindsided by the last-minute decision from Kandahar, where Haibatullah is based. “Two illustrious [figures in the movement] said that “the Taliban were taken hostage,” the Afghan source with leadership ties said. He described a rally of thousands of clerics last month as an attempt by other disaffected Taliban factions to bypass the leadership and claim legitimacy for girls’ education. This plan was thwarted when Haibatullah came to Kabul for the first time, to address the meeting, in a speech that pointedly sidestepped the issue of girls’ education. Despite taboos on criticizing the leadership, after decades of emphasizing unity on the battlefield, a handful of senior Taliban figures have spoken out against the ban. In May, Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai directly attacked the ban on girls’ education in a televised speech defending the rights of “half of Afghanistan’s population.” Taliban cleric Rahimullah Haqqani, who was killed last week by an Islamic State suicide bomber, previously told the BBC that Afghan women and girls should have access to education: “There is no justification in sharia. [law] to say that female education is not allowed. Absolutely no excuse. “All religious books state that female education is permissible and obligatory, because, for example, if a woman falls ill, in an Islamic environment like Afghanistan or Pakistan, and needs treatment, it is much better to be treated by a female doctor.” Rahimullah Haqqani has previously stated that Afghan women and girls should have access to education. Photo: Brochure In June the central government launched a bloody response to an uprising by a Taliban commander in the Balkhab district of northern Sar-e-pol province. The conflict had complex roots, but sources told the Observer that before leader Mawlawi Mehdi lost his government job, he had also championed girls’ education. And because the ban is officially only temporary and the Taliban have always said they support the principle of women’s right to education, some officials with younger daughters are willing to be open about their stance on the school. Maulawi Ahmed Taqi, a spokesman for the ministry of higher education, highlighted efforts to adapt universities so that women can study while meeting Taliban demands for strict gender segregation, as a sign of the group’s commitment to women’s education. “I have daughters and of course I want my girls to be educated in religious madrassas as well as to have a modern education,” she said. They are currently in primary school, but he is confident they will be able to continue the lessons as they get older, he added. “I’m optimistic that schools won’t be closed forever”
