Afghanistan: despite Taliban announcements, school and university often closed to girls

College girls on their way home, in Kabul, September 13, 2021. AFP - BULENT KILIC

Text by: RFI Follow

5 mins

Afghan women are disappearing from the public space in their country, behind burkas.

Apart from doctors and nurses, women no longer have the right to work and teenage girls between the ages of 12 and 17 go to school.

A lot has changed for the students too.

Testimony.

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The new regime, whose first brutal reign against women between 1996 and 2001 remains engraved in our memories, has clarified in recent days its policy against them, which it promises to be more moderate than in the past.

Twenty years ago, the Taliban banned all education and work outside the home.

Today, female students at private universities have been officially allowed to return to school - but separated from men and with

compulsory

abaya

and

hijab

- just like elementary school students. 

Afghan high school students will return to class " 

as quickly as possible

 ", assured the Taliban on Tuesday, September 21, whose recent announcement of a series of restrictions on women had raised fears that they would again ban young people girls to study. 

► 

See also: In Afghanistan, facing the Taliban, women demonstrate to defend their rights

“ 

We are finalizing things.

It will happen as quickly as possible,

 ”said Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the Taliban regime, at a press conference in Kabul, adding that the government wanted to provide a“ 

safe educational environment

 ”for girls before they returned to school. .

But many Afghan women continue to doubt the Islamists' real will to grant them freedoms.

“

 It was already like that the last time [between 1996 and 2001, editor's note].

They kept saying that they would allow us to return to work, but that never happened,

 ”a professor told AFP on Monday.

"

She will remain uneducated

 "

In fact, the door has already closed for many women.

This is what Farshi, 26, a graduate social worker, the eldest of a family of 6 children, tells us. 

" 

One of my sisters is in third grade, so she's at home since she no longer has the right to go to school,

" she says.

joined by

Carlotta Morteo

, of the International service of RFI

.

We are very sad, because she will remain uneducated, while she is very intelligent, she is second in her class.

All she can do is study the books at home

.

"

“ 

My other sister is in college,” Farshi continues. She is studying law, it was her last semester. She was supposed to take her exams, but they canceled them. Students are no longer allowed to take these courses. They eliminated subjects: international law, history, geography, environmental sciences, languages ​​too. We no longer have the right to learn English at university and in schools. There are only the basic subjects: pashto, dari and maths. What are we going to do with this?

 " 

Farshi herself bears the brunt of the restrictions, which amount to a disguised ban.

“ 

I have a license and I wanted to take my Masters,

” she says.

But since now we can't be in the same classes as the boys, and I'm the only girl registered, the University couldn't open a class just for me.

I am so depressed.

I wanted to continue with a doctorate.

All our hopes are shattered.

 " 

►

 To read also: #DoNotTouchMyClothes: against the Taliban, Afghan women defend their traditional outfits

" 

For their safety

 "

The Taliban have also since their arrival largely restricted women's access to the world of work, telling them to stay at home " 

for their safety

 " and until they can organize the separation between men and women also at the scene. of work.

On Sunday, September 19, the new mayor of Kabul announced that in his municipality, women's jobs would now be occupied by men.

The pill is all the more bitter as the Afghan women had managed, in recent years, to climb the ranks and to be appointed for some to positions previously reserved for men, from pilot to judge to parliamentarian.

Hundreds of thousands of them have thus entered the world of work, a question of survival for those whom decades of war have left widowed or in charge of a disabled husband.

► 

To listen: Afghan women: "There is no longer any possibility of working and exercising my profession as a judge"

Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

The new Afghan regime has also completed the formation of its government, which does not include any female minister or ministry for women, announced Zabihullah Mujahid.

The Taliban brought in a few members of other communities, in line with their initial commitment to have a cabinet open to diversity. 

Thus, the new Minister of Health is a member of the Hazara community, a Shiite minority persecuted by the Taliban in the 1990s, and that of Commerce, a merchant from Panshir, a province of Tajik ethnicity historically hostile to the Taliban.

But the Taliban have not reversed the lack of room for women in the executive.

Last week they installed the

Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice

, feared for its fundamentalism during the first Taliban reign, in place of the former Ministry of Women's Affairs.

► 

To listen: Literature without borders: In support of Afghan women with the writer Chabname Zariâb

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