Taliban further restrict female education by closing NGO-funded schools in two Afghan provinces

Afghanistan is the only country in the world where half the population, women and girls, are deprived of a basic human right: education.

When they finish sixth grade, at the age of 12, Afghans have to leave the benches of regulated schools by order of the Taliban, the fundamentalist militia in power since August 15, 2021. Many Afghan girls and young women have not resigned to the prohibition to continue their studies and have sought alternatives to that formal education that is denied them.

One of them is to attend English classes, other subjects, or professional training, in educational centers supported by NGOs or the United Nations.

That alternative route no longer exists in two provinces in southern Afghanistan.

In a letter addressed to the authorities of these provinces, the Afghan Ministry of Education urged "to suspend all educational activities until the projects and activities of these institutions are reviewed, and controversial issues are resolved at the national level," says the letter released by the independent newspaper

The spokesman for the Kandahar Department of Education, Mutawakil Ahmad, later confirmed the order in statements broadcast on television, Sara, the false name of a 20-year-old education activist, explains via WhatsApp from Kabul.

That spokesman, the young woman emphasizes, did not explain what these controversial issues are to which the letter from the Ministry alludes: "The only thing he said is that [the Taliban] had received complaints from the people."

Both Helmand and Kandahar are two conservative provinces, considered strongholds of fundamentalists.

Kandahar, whose homonymous capital is the second largest city in the country with some 600,000 inhabitants, is the cradle of the Taliban, and is home to its supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Ajundzadá.

The decision to veto Afghans access to secondary education and, since last December, also university education, is attributed to him.

Taliban Puts Brakes on Education: Halts Projects in Kandahar and Helmand @HashteSubhDaily https://t.co/qvbRJ0qtwI pic.twitter.com/kdTlZjbEPo

— Hasht E Subh English (@8AM_Media) April 17, 2023

The new veto this Monday does not only affect girls.

Boys also attend these centers.

An activist from Kandahar quoted by the Efe agency, Mubin Ahmad Khalil, deplored that the measure will affect "tens of thousands of students who attend more than 600 classes that will be closed."

Since September 2021, when the return to school for Afghans aged 12 and over was postponed indefinitely, 1.1 million Afghan girls and adolescents have been excluded from formal education, UNESCO estimates.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization puts the percentage of school-age Afghans deprived of education at 2.5 million.

In addition, almost 30% of the country's girls have never had access to primary education, the only one still allowed by the Taliban.

When fundamentalists banned university education for women on December 20, 2022, 100,000 Afghans who were pursuing higher education in public or private centers were also expelled from their classes.

power pulse

The announcement of the suspension of the activities of the educational centers in Helmand and Kandahar could not only be a first step before the closure of these institutions throughout the country – a fear expressed by Afghan activists on social networks.

It also points to a new chapter in the battle over female education that the Taliban maintains with the international community, and even within its own ranks, where some senior officials of the Taliban government in Kabul have shown unusual disagreement with respect to the supreme leader. and his circle in Kandahar, according to various analysts.

The ban on Afghans from training —and from working in the Administration, NGOs and, more recently, in the United Nations— has become the seal of fundamentalist ideological purity with which the supreme leader Ajundzadá is trying to impose his authority on the political level, says in an analysis Andrew Watkins, an expert from the federal think tank United States Institute for Peace (USIP in its acronym in English).

For now, Ajundzadá seems to have succeeded, as indicated by the successive bans on the education of Afghan women and the increasing repression against activists in favor of that right, including subjected to enforced disappearances.

This is the case of Matiullah Wesa, 30, founder of the NGO PenPath, who has been missing since March 27, after being detained by the Taliban intelligence services.

.@matiullahwesa is an activist for education in Afghanistan, especially for girls.

The Taliban have stopped him!

RELEASE IT https://t.co/z1NKxd4NjG

For every thousand signatures we will send a postal letter to the authorities to apply even more pressure.

— Amnesty International Spain (@amnistiaespana) April 13, 2023

The activist Laila Basim details from Kabul through WhatsApp some of the keys that explain the distrust of the Taliban towards the alternative centers, now closed in Helmand and Kandahar, beyond the fact that many of their students were girls.

One of those reasons is that, for the most part, "they are financed by foreign institutions."

Another, that the Taliban intends to "review the curriculum and teaching material, prepared by the institutions that financed them," she stresses.

Parasto Hakim, head of Srak, an organization that runs secret schools for girls in Afghanistan, agrees with Basim.

She points to two aspects, also via WhatsApp, from a place that she does not reveal "for security reasons".

She also believes that the Taliban want to control what is taught in these educational centers, but another key that she cites is "money" that allows them to function.

These funds often come from NGOs and the United Nations, and are beyond the control of fundamentalists.

Hakim cites, for example, UNICEF-funded community schools, often in remote areas where no other schools exist.

This activist denounces that the change in the study plans that the Taliban confirmed months ago is due to the purpose of turning "all schools into [Islamic] madrasas."

And she warns that "the world talks about reopening girls' schools, but they don't talk about what is being taught in boys' schools or what would be taught to adolescent girls if [female] institutes reopened."

On December 17, the

daily published a summary of the Taliban's new school curriculum.

In it, he proposes to eliminate entire subjects and strip textbooks of all images of living beings, especially women.

Even in biology books, it will be ruled out to include any representation of human anatomy.

This new curriculum, according to the independent newspaper, prohibits “any positive mention of democracy and human rights;

the promotion of peace, women's rights and education”.

The UN is described as an "evil organization" and all mention of elections, music, television, radio and parties and celebrations, including birthdays, is also deleted.

The figures of non-Muslim scientists and inventors disappear, and Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, is cited as an example of a banned name.

Nor will the manuals alert Afghan children to the danger of landmines.

Many of them were planted by the Taliban.

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