Shift within the Taliban regime: Could the ban on women and girls be abolished? – The world

However, in the midst of the prevailing darkness in the most problematic regions of the world, the Taliban ban to form girls at the middle level could face their greatest internal challenge so far.

No fighting for real girls and women is more urgent than in Afghanistan, where the return of Taliban on power 2021. Led to serious human rights violations, including the exclusion of girls from secondary education.

After another school year in Afghanistan began without girls above the sixth grade, the schism inside the regime offers hope that the ban could be abolished in the near future.

Despite the efforts of the Taliban to project unity, tensions among their leaders appeared last month, when Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Abas Stanikzai was forced to escape into Dubai.

He allegedly threatened his arrest for critiquing the prohibition of girls and behavior of Mule Haibatulah Akhundzad, the Supreme Leader of the regime.

Given that the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Minister of Defense is supported by mitigating the prohibition of education, Akhundzad sent soldiers to the airport in Kabul to prevent other members of the cabinet to seek asylum abroad.

Basically the crisis in Taliban leaders lies a series of failed attempts to annul the anti-public policy of Afghanistan.

As soon as they took power three and a half years ago, Akhundzad and his fraction with more consulting positions in Kandahar rejected the Taliban’s promises that the girls would be allowed to attend high school and that women would be allowed to work « within Islam ».

Even at the beginning of the school 2022 years, the Taliban continued to assure the public that the girls would be allowed to continue their education, in order to reverse the course, stating the need for a « corresponding Islamic environment. »

A series of all repressed edits followed soon after, and they were all aimed at Afghan girls and women.

Women are prohibited almost all forms of employment, are excluded from almost all public spaces and is forbidden to travel anywhere without a male companion.

Draconian dress code demanded women wearing burches that cover them from head to toe.

By 2024. years, these restrictions have become even more extreme. Women, who have already been forbidden to speak public, is now banned to mole or recite the Quran loud, even in the presence of other women.

For some time, disagreements within the Taliban remained silent. Then, at the graduate ceremony in the Province of Khost in the southeast of the country last month, Stationzai openly condemned the regime policy.

« These restrictions imposed by women are the personal desire of some Taliban elderly and are not Islamic, » he said.

The regime, he added, makes « injustice to 20 million people. There is no justification for this – neither now in the future. »

Mentioning religious excuses for the education of girls, Standyzai reminded the audience, « During the prophet Muhammad, they were also open to men. There were exceptional women whose contributions would be exposed to them, they took a lot of time. »

Stationzai presented his comments after a similar critique of Minister of Internal Affairs, Sirajudin Hakani, who, in one of the first public ravages among the Taliban, also condemned the injunction of girls and rejecting the regime to communicate with the international community on women’s rights.

Minister of Refugees Khalil Rahman Hakani was also convinced that girls and women should attend high schools and universities at a time when he was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul in December.

In this context, Afghanistan faces deep economic and humanitarian crises that have pushed more than 25 million people – more than half of the population – into poverty.

The exclusion of women and girls from the labor market deteriorated these economic challenges, encouraging growing resistance against antivection Akhundzadine.

It seems that the rift between the Taliban came at the right time.

UN officials are considering the opportunity to classify the gender apartheid, defined as « inhabitants of the institutionalized regime of systematic discrimination, subordination and dominance of one group or others, based on the gender, and the intention of maintaining this regime », as a crime against humanity.

This move would represent a turning point in the fight against systematic subordination of women in Afghanistan and beyond.

Meanwhile, Afghan girls – many of them were already at school when Taliban again took power – they continue to fight for their education, defying their dreams to become doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and entrepreneurs.

With a high risk by itself and their families, some attend secrets, join local teaching initiatives at home or are looking for opportunities for distance learning.

Some have even managed to leave the country to study abroad.

But although the courage of Afghan girls is indisputable, their efforts will not be enough to close the gap between the number of girls who have the right to education towards international law and those actually realizing it. Given the current rift among the Taliban’s international community – especially Muslim countries – they must use internal divisions to put pressure on the regime to annul the injection of girls’ education.

Nowhere in Kuran or Islamic teachings there is no excuse for denying rights to girls to attend school.

Now there is a real chance that even Taliban finally listens to this lesson.

The author is a former United Kingdom Prime Minister, a special UN envoy for global education and the chairman of the organization « Education cannot wait ».

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.
www.project-syndicate.org

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