Screenshot: Bulent Kilic (AFP)
In one of the more bizarre announcements in recent weeks, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs announced that Afghan girls will return to secondary schools “soon”, a spokesperson told AlJazeera earlier this week following the Taliban’s takeover in August.
Once the Taliban took control of the Afghan government, teenage girls were told to stay home from school until a “safe learning environment” could be established. Meanwhile, boys and primary-aged girls were safe enough to return to school.
There were fears that the Taliban would return to its ways in the 1990s, when girls were banned from attending school and women were barred from employment.
Even though the group promised to uphold the rights of women and girls, those fears were warranted.
The group wasn’t clear on whether or not women could return to work in government buildings and has forced universities to enact gender segregation policies. It named an all-male cabinet, but said a woman would be named at a later date.
And it’s led to neighboring nations to become involved. Both Pakistan and Qatar have called on the international community to enforce gender equality in Afghanistan.
In a news conference, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said it “has been very disappointing to see some steps being taken backwards” by the Taliban.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said that even though he doubted the Taliban would once again place an outright ban on girls’ education, the armed group should “be reminded that Islam would never allow such a thing to happen again.”
In other ways, though, the Taliban has returned to some of its 1990s rules when, in September, it banned women from participating in sports and returned to its “public humiliation” techniques when it hanged a man for kidnapping a father and a son. In an interview with the Associated Press, one of the Taliban’s founders said it plans to carry out the public executions and amputations.
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