Taliban’s broken promises leave Afghanistan’s schoolgirls and women in despair

Afghan women protest outside the Ministry of Education. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 25 April 2022
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Taliban’s broken promises leave Afghanistan’s schoolgirls and women in despair

  • Continued ban on girls’ secondary education among other repressive steps points to dominance of hardliners
  • Ultraconservatism evident in new rules that ban women without male chaperone from traveling long distances

DUBAI: Every day, Nasima, 16, and Shakila, 17, eagerly await news that their school in Kabul, Lameha-e-Shaheed, will reopen so that they can resume their studies. They have waited one month now since the Taliban abruptly closed secondary schools for girls, reneging on a previous decision to grant women more freedom and access to education.

On the morning of March 23, more than 1 million girls of Nasima and Shakila’s age group had showed up at their schools across Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August last year, only to be turned away from the gates.

“Under the guidance of the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, schools for women from the sixth grade above are closed until further notice,” read a report by the pro-Taliban Bakhtar News Agency.




“The truth is that the Taliban’s views on women’s rights, human rights and individual freedoms have not changed in the last 20 years,” Nilofar Akrami, a 30-year-old university lecturer who teaches women at Kabul University, told Arab News. (Supplied)

Although many Afghans were dismayed by the news, those familiar with the puritanical views and erratic policies of the Taliban during their 1996-2001 rule were not at all surprised.

Creeping ultraconservatism is evident in new rules that ban women without a hijab or male chaperone from traveling long distances, dismissal of women from jobs and positions of influence, and, most prominently, in the education policy U-turn of March 23.

FASTFACTS

• New ban on girls’ education exposes rifts in the Taliban leadership.

• Afghan teachers and girls hold out little hope of schools reopening.

• Female literacy rate more than doubled between 2000 and 2018.

“They kept telling us that they would reopen the schools and let everyone go back,” Lina Farzam, a primary school teacher in Kabul, told Arab News.

“Although we never trusted that the Taliban had changed, we had hope. We don’t know why the world trusted them and gave them another chance.”

 

 

The about-turn on secondary school education, which reportedly happened after a secret meeting of the group’s leadership in Kandahar, suggests that the ultraconservative wing still retains control over the regime’s ideological trajectory.

“What’s so cruel about this is the fact that they announced that girls can go back to school, then backtracked,” said Farzam. “Imagine those girls happily preparing for school the night before and waiting to go back to class.”

Primary school-aged girls in Afghanistan are permitted to receive schooling up until the sixth grade. Women are also allowed to attend university, albeit under robust gender segregation rules and only if they abide by a strictly enforced dress code.




The Taliban’s shift on girls’ schooling reportedly came after a secret meeting. (AFP)

Following the US-led coalition’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the resurgent Taliban insisted it had changed its ways and would allow women and girls to continue studying as they had under the UN-recognized government.

At a press conference in Kabul on Aug. 18, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid promised that the new government would respect the rights of women.




In this file photo taken on March 23, 2022, girls arrive at their school in Kabul. (AFP)

“The truth is that the Taliban’s views on women’s rights, human rights and individual freedoms have not changed in the last 20 years,” Nilofar Akrami, a 30-year-old university lecturer who teaches women at Kabul University, told Arab News.

“The Taliban are as brutal as they were in the 1990s, and, when it comes to women, they have gotten worse. Unfortunately, they have learned how to wear a good mask to deceive the world.

“They still think women should stay at home and women who leave their home to study or work are bad, and that they will corrupt society.”




“I am disturbed because there is no justification for denying girls an education,” Daisy Khan, founder of the New York-based Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, told Arab News. (Supplied)

For Akrami, any hopes for women’s empowerment in Afghanistan have long been dashed. “As a woman who started her career at university to make a difference to the lives of women, I am sorry that my dreams and the dreams of hundreds of women like me have been ruined since the Taliban came to power,” she said.

Asma Faraz, who previously worked at the Afghan Embassy in Washington D.C., is likewise disheartened to see the freedoms and opportunities of the past 20 years snatched away.




Keeping women out of work costs Afghanistan up to $1 billion, or 5 percent of gross domestic product, according to the UN. (Supplied)

“My boss was a female ambassador,” she told Arab News, referring to Roya Rahmani, the first Afghan woman to serve as her country’s top diplomat in the US. “As a woman, I was so proud to see another enter the room and watch how everyone respected her.

“Women can also be ambassadors, women can be members of parliament, women can be journalists and doctors. But now in Kabul, women and girls will see how women cannot go to school and can only get married, and see their mothers only working at home.”

The Taliban leadership has sought to justify its ban on secondary education for Afghan girls on the grounds of religious principle — a view that Islamic scholars and civil society dispute.




At a press conference in Kabul on Aug. 18, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid promised that the new government would respect the rights of women. (Supplied)

“I am disturbed because there is no justification for denying girls an education,” Daisy Khan, founder of the New York-based Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, told Arab News.

“In Islam, pursuit of knowledge is an obligation on all Muslims. Prophet Muhammad made no distinction between boys’ and girls’ education. He said: ‘The best of you is one who gives a good education to his children.’”

Conflicting messages from high-ranking officials could be indicative of a schism within the Taliban ranks between the hard line based in the movement’s Kandahar stronghold and the more moderate officials managing affairs from the capital.




Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader, has ignored repeated calls, even from many clerics, to reverse the decision on girls’ secondary education. (Supplied)

According to some reports, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader, has ignored repeated calls, even from many clerics, to reverse the decision on girls’ secondary education.

“People keep talking about Hibatullah, but no one has seen him or knows where he is in Kandahar,” said Faraz. “Maybe he is living in a village where people don’t allow their daughters to go to school and he doesn’t know how living is outside the village.

“If we want to give the Taliban a chance, that’s fine, give them a chance, but they can’t rule over everyone else and bring what they think is right from their villages to the cities and to the capital where people used to go to school and work.”




Eager to see the matter resolved quickly and the rights of Afghan women and girls preserved, education activists from the US traveled to Kabul at the end of March to meet with Taliban officials. (Supplied)

In contrast with the views emanating from the Kandahar camp, one senior official recently told NPR that the Taliban had not changed course on girls’ education but simply needed more time to decide on appropriate school uniforms.

“There is no issue of banning girls from schools,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s permanent ambassador-designate to the UN, told the news outlet. “It is only a technical issue of deciding on the form of school uniform for girls. We hope the uniform issue is resolved and finalized as soon as possible.”




“There is no issue of banning girls from schools,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s permanent ambassador-designate to the UN, told NPR. (Supplied)

Eager to see the matter resolved quickly and the rights of Afghan women and girls preserved, education activists from the US traveled to Kabul at the end of March to meet with Taliban officials.

“While the world’s attention has turned to the crisis in Ukraine, it is extremely important that we not forget what is happening in Afghanistan, a country which is now experiencing one of its worst years in recorded history,” Masuda Sultan, an Afghan American entrepreneur and human rights advocate, who was part of the delegation, told Arab News.




Taliban fighters stand guard as Afghan protestors take part in a protest against the alleged published reports of harassment of Afghan refugees in Iran, in front of the Iranian embassy in Kabul on April 11, 2022. (AFP)

“The continued economic strangulation of this nation may bring about consequences that will be far more costly to resolve if not addressed right away.”

Indeed, unless the Taliban shows it is willing to soften its hard-line approach, particularly on matters relating to women’s rights, the regime is unlikely to gain access to billions of dollars in desperately needed aid, loans and frozen assets held by the US, IMF and World Bank.




The Taliban leadership has sought to justify its ban on secondary education for Afghan girls on the grounds of religious principle. (Supplied)

Furthermore, keeping women out of work costs Afghanistan up to $1 billion, or 5 percent of gross domestic product, according to the UN. As The Economist noted in a recent article, “in the midst of an economic crisis, the country can ill afford the loss.”

For Farzam and her school pupils in Kabul, and indirectly even for the millions of Afghans in urgent need of economic assistance, the outcome of the apparent ideological tussle within the Taliban leadership could prove momentous, whether for better or worse.

“The girls are now sad because they can’t continue their education,” she told Arab News. “They are eagerly waiting for the reopening of their schools.”


UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

Updated 09 November 2024
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UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

  • Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
  • He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq

LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.

Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.

Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.

However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”

Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”


Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

Updated 09 November 2024
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Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

  • Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
  • The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees

WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”


50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals

Updated 09 November 2024
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50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals

  • The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from

UN: The World Health Organization and some 50 countries issued a warning Friday at the United Nations about the rise of ransomware attacks against hospitals, with the United States specifically blaming Russia.
Ransomware is a type of digital blackmail in which hackers encrypt the data of victims — individuals, companies or institutions — and demand money as a “ransom” in order to restore it.
Such attacks on hospitals “can be issues of life and death,” according to WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who addressed the UN Security Council during a meeting Friday called by the United States.
“Surveys have shown that attacks on the health care sector have increased in both scale and frequency,” Ghebreyesus said, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation to combat them.
“Cybercrime, including ransomware, poses a serious threat to international security,” he added, calling on the Security Council to consider it as such.
A joint statement co-signed by over 50 countries — including South Korea, Ukraine, Japan, Argentina, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — offered a similar warning.
“These attacks pose direct threats to public safety and endanger human lives by delaying critical health care services, cause significant economic harm, and can pose a threat to international peace and security,” read the statement, shared by US Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger.
The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from.
At the meeting, Neuberger directly called out Moscow, saying: “Some states — most notably Russia — continue to allow ransomware actors to operate from their territory with impunity.”
France and South Korea also pointed the finger at North Korea.
Russia defended itself by claiming the Security Council was not the appropriate forum to address cybercrime.
“We believe that today’s meeting can hardly be deemed a reasonable use of the Council’s time and resources,” said Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia.
“If our Western colleagues wish to discuss the security of health care facilities,” he continued, “they should agree in the Security Council upon specific steps to stop the horrific... attacks by Israel on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.”


China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws

Updated 09 November 2024
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China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws

  • Laws aimed at reinforcing Philippine rights to territory, resources
  • China unlikely to recognize laws, senator says

BEIJING/MANILA: China summoned the Philippines’ ambassador on Friday to express its objection to two new laws in the Southeast Asian nation asserting maritime rights and sovereignty over disputed areas of the South China Sea, its foreign ministry said.
China made “solemn representations” to the ambassador shortly after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act into law to strengthen his country’s maritime claims and bolster its territorial integrity.
The Maritime Zones law “illegally includes most of China’s Huangyan Island and Nansha Islands and related maritime areas in the Philippines’ maritime zones,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, using the Chinese names for Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands respectively.
Beijing has rejected a 2016 ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration which said its expansive maritime claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis, in a case that was brought by Manila. The United States, a Philippine ally, backs the court’s ruling.
Marcos said the two laws he signed, which define maritime entitlements and set designated sea lanes and air routes, were a demonstration of commitment to uphold the international rules-based order, and protect Manila’s rights to exploit resources peacefully in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Our people, especially our fisher folk, should be able to pursue their livelihood free from uncertainty and harassment,” Marcos said. “We must be able to harness mineral and energy resources in our sea bed.”
But Beijing said the laws were a “serious infringement” of its claims over the contested areas.
“China urges the Philippine side to effectively respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, to immediately stop taking any unilateral actions that may lead to the widening of the dispute and complicate the situation,” Mao said.
China, which also has sovereignty disputes with the other countries in the region, has enacted domestic laws covering the South China Sea, such as a coast guard law in 2021 that allows it to detain foreigners suspected of trespassing.
Beijing, which uses an armada of coast guard ships to assert its claims, routinely accuses vessels of trespassing in areas of the South China Sea that fall inside the EEZs of its neighbors, and has clashed repeatedly with the Philippines in the past year.
Philippine officials acknowledged the challenges they face in implementing the new laws, with one author, Senator Francis Tolentino, saying he did not expect a reduction in tensions.
“China will not recognize these, but the imprimatur that we’ll be getting from the international community would strengthen our position,” Tolentino told a press conference.
The United States on Friday backed the Philippines.
“The passage of the Maritime Zones Act by the Philippines is a routine matter and further clarifies Philippine maritime law,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.


Chad accuses Sudan of aiding rebel forces

Updated 09 November 2024
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Chad accuses Sudan of aiding rebel forces

LIBREVILLE: Chad on Friday accused Sudan of arming and financing rebel groups on Chadian territory with the aim of destabilising its neighbor.
Chad claims Sudan is aiding a rebellion by members of the Zaghawa ethnic group operating out of Sudan’s southwestern El Facher region.
“Sudan is financing and arming terrorist groups operating in the sub-region with the aim of destabilising Chad,” foreign affairs minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said in a press release.
The Zaghawa rebels based in Sudan are led by Ousman Dillo, the younger brother of Chadian opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djerou, who was killed by Chadian military forces earlier this year.
In February 2008, a Zaghawa rebel group based in Sudan launched a lightning offensive in Chad along with other groups, forcing former president Idriss Deby Itno to take refuge in his presidential palace, before he was able to repel them with help from France.
In 2021, Idriss Deby Itno died fighting other rebel forces near the border with Libya and the army named his son Mahamat Idriss Deby as president.
Sudan’s government has accused Chad of meddling in its own civil war by helping to deliver weapons from the United Arab Emirates to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary forces, which Chad and the UAE have denied.
The Sudanese war, which pits the army against the RSF, broke out in April 2023 and has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders, monitors say.