The Taliban prohibit giving university degrees to graduates in Afghanistan

From the dark room in Islamabad (Pakistan) where they take refuge, Roya and Helai, two 22-year-old Afghan recent graduates, tell by video call how on Saturday they fled their country without the degree that accredits that, during the last four years, they studied and They graduated in Spanish Philology.

Last Wednesday, the day after the Taliban banned women from studying at universities, these two young women and a friend from their class went to the Kabul University campus to collect their diplomas.

The Taliban prevented them from entering the center and beat them out.

Three days later they left their lives in Afghanistan behind.

“Now we will not be able to prove that we are graduates in Hispanics.

This breaks our hearts,” Helai laments, as Roya nods next to her.

These two young women and Aqela, who is also a philologist - who participates in the video call from Kabul this Monday - explain to this newspaper that the Taliban have prohibited universities from handing over their degrees to university students who had already finished their degrees and were still waiting for those documents.

The three have verified for themselves, when they were prohibited from accessing their university, the information — advanced by the newspaper

— that the Ministry of Higher Education, in charge of university education, has prevented these educational centers from delivering of the titles.

According to the Afghan media, this ministry has also ordered that the certificates of Afghan graduates that have not yet been processed are not issued.

When the two young women, now refugees in Pakistan, went to campus on Wednesday, "the university was surrounded by the Taliban," recalls Helai.

"They were everywhere," adds Roya.

“When we tried to enter the compound, they stopped us and then ordered us to leave with a lot of violence.

They told us that, from that day on, women were not allowed to study or even enter the campus.

Then they beat us all so that we would leave there, ”she explains.

The two philologists and their friend from their class, who, like them, graduated last year, then tried to verify if it was true that the university was not going to give them their titles.

“Everyone who was there, including the head of the Spanish Department of our college in Kabul,

The story of these young women "is true" emphasizes Parwin, a 21-year-old Afghan refugee in Spain, who confirms in several audio messages that other Afghan graduates with whom she has spoken these days have told her a story similar to that of Helai, Roya and Aqela: university students cannot enter the campuses, which are surrounded by the Taliban, and those who did not yet have their titles, "will not be able to pick them up".

This refugee assures that, from Afghanistan, some women have told her that "the Taliban want to burn women's titles, so that they can never access [a job]."

Last Saturday, December 24, the Taliban Ministry of Finance also ordered NGOs to stop employing women.

Organizations such as Save The Children, Care International and the Norwegian Refugee Council, which have suspended their projects in protest against this decision, employ tens of thousands of Afghans: health workers, translators, teachers, social workers, among other professionals, who now they will remain unemployed, plunging families into poverty that often depend on a woman's salary to survive.

The ban on Afghans from studying at universities and working in NGOs are two new steps in the line that the fundamentalists drew when closing the women's institutes, shortly after coming to power on August 15, 2021. With the veto of access to the higher cycle,

In November, the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education had already taken a first step in this university closure for women by decreeing a ban on them studying various university degrees, including Journalism and scientific-technological careers such as engineering.

Since then, they have not been allowed to learn foreign languages ​​either.

“My sisters studied Mathematics and English, but they couldn't do it before because the Taliban had forbidden it.

They told them that these are not appropriate studies for girls”, deplores Roya.

"Every day worse"

Roya, Helai, two of her sisters and her aunt now subsist hidden in that dark room in Islamabad that reflects her mobile camera.

They arrived on Saturday after managing to leave Afghanistan thanks to Helai's father walking them to the border.

Women in Afghanistan can no longer travel alone, they must be accompanied by a

a male guardian, usually the husband, father or brother.

“Every day that passes is worse for the women of our country.

They have even prevented five-year-old girls from studying the Qur'an in Islamic madrasas," says Helai.

The two philologists have a visa that expires on January 17.

After that day they risk being arrested by the Pakistani police and deported to Afghanistan.

Just for having a bachelor's degree and, above all, for having fled the country, the Taliban could kill them.

The young women made an appointment at the Spanish Embassy in Pakistan a month ago to request a visa that would allow them to request political asylum in Spain, but they have not yet received a response.

“We cannot go back to Afghanistan.

We are threatened with death and we can neither study nor work, when what we most want is to continue with our studies.

Our country has become a prison and women no longer dare even go out on the streets.

The Taliban are the same as they were before," says Helai, alluding to the previous period in power of Islamic fundamentalists, between 1996 and 2001.

This Afghan graduate says that radical Islamists “are taking jobs even from teachers and doctors.

There are men who are beginning to criticize the Taliban because they have gone to the hospital with their wives and have not been able to treat them because there were no female doctors [in Afghanistan, male health workers cannot examine women]”.

As the two Afghans fleeing Pakistan tell her story, her friend Aqela corroborates what they say.

This 28-year-old, who was now studying her second degree, Dentistry, has not yet made it out of Afghanistan.

Her husband had to escape to Iran in 2021;

he was a civil servant and was threatened by the Taliban.

Aqela has no job and lives alone in Kabul.

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