Clerics Oppose Minister’s Remarks on Women’s Education

December 23, 2022 Current News Articles

Mohammad Farshad Daryosh

News Reporter

Tolo News

23 Dec 2022

Speaking to RTA, Nadim outlined four reasons for the closure of universities for female students.

A day after the acting minister of higher education, Neda Mohammad Nadim, appeared in a TV interview, highlighting reasons for the closure of universities for women in the country, many religious scholars opposed his statement and said such views could not be accepted.

Speaking to RTA, Nadim outlined four reasons for the closure of universities for female students.

He said the presence of women at dormitories and their arrival from provinces without male companions, lack of observation of hijab by students, the continuation of co-education, and the existence of some faculties for girls are in contrast with the “Islamic law and Afghan pride.”

The religious scholars asked the Islamic Emirate to reopen universities for women.

“The presence of women in separate dormitories under the leadership of the Ministry of Higher Education is never against the Islamic sharia,” said Fazl Hadi Wazin, a member of the international religious scholars’ council. “Nowhere has it been mentioned in the Sharia that women cannot live in separate dormitories and safe places. Such a thing has never been in Islamic sharia.”

“The closure of university can inflict a heavy damage to the future and nation of Afghanistan,” said Mohsin Hossieni, a religious scholar.

Female students also expressed their concerns over the suspension of higher education for them and asked the Islamic Emirate to “immediately” reopen universities.

“What is our sin? We want our rights from the Islamic Emirate. We have studied with many hardships. What will happen to our future? They should consider our future,” said Hosna Sahibzada, a student.

“We have prepared ourselves in accordance with their law. Now they that they are in power, it is better for them not to close the universities,” said Shkullah Amiri, a student.

“I hope the Taliban will reconsider their order and let the doors of the universities be reopened for male and female students,” said Suraya Paikan, a women’s rights activist.

Lavish weddings return to Kabul, but only women get to enjoy the party

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

KABUL — The spacious ballroom glittered with lights. Young women in chiffon and satin gowns sashayed among the tables or twirled slowly on the dance floor to tapes of rhythmic music. Amid “oohs” and “aahs,” the bride and groom were lowered from the ceiling in a golden cable car and escorted to a lotus-shaped throne. Tiny drones whirred in the air, recording every moment.

Outside the high-tech fairy-tale setting, the Afghan capital remained firmly in the grip of a strict religious regime that has barred teenage girls from school, prohibited women from traveling without a male guardian, required them to wear shapeless Islamic robes in public and most recently banned them from all universities.

But on this chilly December evening, in the ladies’ hall of the newly opened White Palace wedding hotel, several hundred Cinderellas were free to pirouette, compare hairdos and briefly leave behind the restrictions of Taliban rule that had disrupted their plans for college or careers, and left them brooding at home.

“Outside everything is terrible for us. We cannot imagine the future,” said Halima, 20, who finished high school early last year but has been idle since. Clad in a bouffant pink gown, she greeted other guests and giggled with friends. “Here it’s like a sanctuary where we feel safe,” she said. “We can forget our worries and enjoy ourselves for one night.”

But in a separate, smaller room, where the male wedding guests had been relegated, the mood was one of sullen gloom. A few older men chatted quietly, but most younger ones stared at their smartphones, killing time until they could eat, rejoin their female relatives and head home.

It was not mixed company they missed, because wedding parties have long been segregated by gender in this traditional Muslim society. It was live music, which had become the essential, earsplitting ingredient of Afghan weddings — especially on the male side of partitioned salons — during two decades of democratic rule and exposure to Western culture.

When the Taliban movement returned to power 16 months ago, it set out to re-Islamize society by encouraging piety and condemning vulgar behavior. Over time, rules have hardened. While the regime’s most controversial measures have been directed against women, others have been implemented more severely against men. The crackdown on wedding music is a prime example.

“In Islam, it is very clear. All music and instruments are forbidden except the daira,” a traditional leather tambourine, said Atiq Mojahir, spokesman for the Taliban Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, speaking in an interview this month. “We do not want people to be disturbed by wedding music, but in the case of women, we are being a bit flexible.” As long as they keep the music soft, he added, “that is okay.”

As for male guests, Mohajir said, “they can do other things — read poetry, preach, have comedies. They can enjoy the occasion any way they want, except with music.” In recent years, he said, male wedding parties had gone too far, with wild dancing and drug use. “Some families were bothered,” he said.

That argument has done little to appease either customers or proprietors in the capital’s wedding business, a once-thriving industry of some 150 halls that supports scores of beauty parlors, flower importers, caterers, dressmakers, video and camera crews, car rental agencies, waiters, disc jockeys and singers. Afghan weddings, a staple of social life, often have 1,000 guests or more.

But in recent months, with the economy in dire straits after months of international sanctions and skyrocketing inflation, weddings have shrunk in size and profit — as well as excitement. Families haggle over the price of dinner menus; beauticians offer 70 percent discounts. Grooms buy plastic flowers instead of fresh ones to decorate the white cars that convey each new couple to the wedding hall, a ceremonial duty once performed by white carriage horses.

“I used to get roses from Pakistan for $3 a bunch and sell them for $4. Now I am making only 25 cents, and a lot of them just wilt,” said Sharif Wali, a florist in the middle-class Khair Khana district.

Nearby, a row of beauty parlors close to several wedding halls has been struggling to survive. Storefront images of coiffured brides had been erased, and most salons were dark or empty. In one, two hairdressers waited in vain for customers.

“I am working here because I have nothing else to do,” said Malika, 21, who was a senior in high school when the Taliban returned. “I wanted to go to college and study political science, but my dream is gone. My only choice now is to stay sitting at home, or get married.”

Even more than cost, a sense of fear and uncertainty is dampening wedding spirits and attendance. With the regime’s total ban on live music, many popular wedding singers have left the country. In the men’s sections, groups of Taliban fighters sometimes appear without notice, scanning the room while conversations die and a resentful chill lingers. Several former guests said they had seen hotel employees and even bridegrooms hustled off to a police station when inspectors heard the forbidden sound of music.

In female sections, the festivities are more lively and the guests relaxed. Mothers bring their children, costumed for the occasion.

The only males allowed are a few close relatives of the bride and groom, plus photographers and DJs who spin recordings of carefully chosen music, such as lilting ballads from Iran and traditional Afghan melodies that are peppy enough to dance to but not loud enough to carry.

Still, there is a nervous cat-and-mouse vibe in the female sections, too. Hotel managers keep a close eye on things, and guards at the front gates stand ready to alert them of unexpected visitors.

“It’s a bit tricky,” the manager of a low-cost hall said one recent evening, as arriving guests dutifully filed into two separate entrances. “We are happy that the new government has brought peace and security, but their ban on all music makes things difficult. People know it is forbidden by law, but it is an old tradition and it is still in their hearts.”

Two floors above, the ladies’ hall filled rapidly. Women mingled and whispered, waiting for the bride and groom to appear. Word spread that a group of Taliban fighters had entered downstairs, but a while later, the all-clear signal came. The DJ put on a popular Afghan song, with a soft but thumping beat. Outside the door, the sound was muffled; two flights down, it was inaudible. The evening was safe.

Despite financial hardships, weddings have resumed at a steady pace after many halls shut down during the early months of Taliban rule. In modest neighborhoods, halls with worn carpets and soda stands are booked on many evenings. Along a wide boulevard leading to the international airport, an array of luxurious halls, some refurbished and others brand-new, light up the night sky.

The White Palace, which cost $7 million to build and opened last month, features gold-painted pillars, a soaring central dome and grand ballroom staircases. Its energetic co-owner, Fazel Sultani, is both a strong supporter of business development under the new government and a frustrated critic of its crackdown on wedding music for men.

“A party without music is like a dead flower. We want our guests to be happy, but what can we do?” Sultani said, shaking his head.

Pamela Constable is a staff writer for The Washington Post’s foreign desk. She completed a tour as Afghanistan/Pakistan bureau chief in 2019, and has reported extensively from Latin America, South Asia and around the world since the 1980s.

Protest Held in Kabul to Criticize Suspension of Women’s Higher Education

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Mohammad Farshad Daryosh

News Reporter

Tolo News

22 Dec 2022

Taliban minister defends ban on women’s university studies

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Associated Press

22 Dec 2022

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The minister of higher education in the Taliban government on Thursday defended his decision to ban women from universities — a decree that had triggered a global backlash.

Discussing the matter for the first time in public, Nida Mohammad Nadim said the ban issued earlier this week was necessary to prevent the mixing of genders in universities and because he believes some subjects being taught violated the principles of Islam. He said the ban was in place until further notice.

In an interview with Afghan television, Nadim pushed back against the widespread international condemnation, including from Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Nadim said that foreigners should stop interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

Earlier on Thursday, the foreign ministers of the G-7 group of states urged the Taliban to rescind the ban, warning that “gender persecution may amount to a crime against humanity.” The ministers warned after a virtual meeting that “Taliban policies designed to erase women from public life will have consequences for how our countries engage with the Taliban.” The G-7 group includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.

A former provincial governor, police chief and military commander, Nadim was appointed minister in October by the supreme Taliban leader and previously pledged to stamp out secular schooling. Nadim opposes female education, saying it is against Islamic and Afghan values.

Other reasons he gave for the university ban were women’s failure to observe a dress code and the study of certain subjects and courses.

“We told girls to have proper hijab but they didn’t and they wore dresses like they are going to a wedding ceremony,” he said. “Girls were studying agriculture and engineering, but this didn’t match Afghan culture. Girls should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honor.”

He added that work was underway to fix these issues and universities would reopen for women once they were resolved. The Taliban made similar promises about high school access for girls, saying classes would resume for them once “technical issues” around uniforms and transport were sorted out, but girls remain shut out of classrooms.

The Taliban tried to fix what he claimed were problems they inherited from the previous administration since their takeover last year. He alleged that people were not following rules and that this justified the university ban.

In Afghanistan, there has been some domestic opposition to the university ban, including from several cricket players. Cricket is a hugely popular sport in the country, and players have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

Another show of support for female university students came at Nangarhar Medical University. Local media reported that male students walked out in solidarity and refused to sit for exams until women’s university access was reinstated.

Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women and minorities, the Taliban have widely implemented their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, since they seized power in August 2021.

They have banned girls from middle school and high school, barred women from most fields of employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms. At the same time Afghan society, while largely traditional, has increasingly embraced the education of girls and women over the past two decades.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking to reporters in Washington on Thursday, echoed international opposition to the Taliban decision to ban women from university studies. He said the Taliban will not obtain much- needed improved relations with the world if they “continue on this course.”

“What they’ve done is to try to sentence Afghan women and girls to a dark future without opportunity,” he said. “And the bottom line is that no country is going to be able to succeed, much less thrive, if it denies half its population the opportunity to contribute. And to be clear, and we’re engaged with other countries on this right now. There is going to be a cost.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday that the ban was “neither Islamic nor humane.” Speaking at a joint news conference with his Yemeni counterpart, he called on the Taliban to reverse their decision.

“What harm is there in women’s education? What harm does it do to Afghanistan?” Cavusoglu said. “Is there an Islamic explanation? On the contrary, our religion, Islam, is not against education, on the contrary, it encourages education and science.”

Saudi Arabia, which until 2019 enforced sweeping restrictions on women’s travel, employment and other crucial aspects of their daily lives, including driving, also urged the Taliban to change course.

The Saudi foreign ministry expressed “astonishment and regret” at Afghan women being denied a university education. In a statement late Wednesday, the ministry said the decision was “astonishing in all Islamic countries.”

Previously, Qatar, which has engaged with the Taliban authorities, also condemned the decision.

In the capital of Kabul, about two dozen women marched in the streets Thursday, chanting in Dari for freedom and equality. “All or none. Don’t be afraid. We are together,” they chanted.

In video obtained by The Associated Press, one woman said Taliban security forces used violence to disperse the group.

“The girls were beaten and whipped,” she said. “They also brought military women with them, whipping the girls. We ran away, some girls were arrested. I don’t know what will happen.”

Girls have been banned from school beyond the sixth grade since the Taliban’s return.

In northeastern Takhar province, teenage girls said the Taliban on Thursday forced them out of a private education training center and told them they no longer had the right to study. One student, 15-year-old Zuhal, said the girls were beaten.

Another, 19-year-old Maryam, said while crying: “This training center was our hope. What can these girls do? They were full of hope and coming here to learn. It is really a pity. (The Taliban) have taken all our hopes. They closed schools, universities, and the training center, which was very small.”

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed.

US warns Taliban of ‘costs’ over university ban for Afghan women

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

22 Dec 2022

US secretary of state says Taliban is sentencing women and girls in Afghanistan to a ‘dark future without opportunity’.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned the Taliban that the United States will impose “costs” on the group if it does not reverse its recent ban on women attending university in Afghanistan.

Blinken said on Thursday that the Taliban-led government in Kabul will not be able to improve relations with the rest of the world if it continued to deny Afghan women their fundamental rights.

“What they’ve done is to try to sentence Afghan women and girls to a dark future without opportunity,” Blinken said during an end-of-year news conference in Washington, DC.

“And the bottom line is that no country is going to be able to succeed – much less thrive – if it denies half its population the opportunity to contribute.

“And to be clear, we’re engaged with other countries on this right now – there are going to be costs if this is not reversed, if this has not changed,” said Blinken, without specifying what the measures might include.

Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy is already under heavy US and Western sanctions following the Taliban’s takeover of the country last year amid the withdrawal of US troops, which ended a 20-year occupation.

In response to widespread fears of a return to the harsh policies that dominated the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the group initially promised a more moderate government when it took power in August 2021.

But the move to suspend university education for women, announced earlier this week, sparked outrage across the world, including from several Muslim-majority countries that called on the Taliban to reverse the decree.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that the ban was “neither Islamic nor humane”.

“What harm is there in women’s education? What harm does it do to Afghanistan?” Cavusoglu said. “Is there an Islamic explanation? On the contrary, our religion, Islam, is not against education; on the contrary, it encourages education and science.”

In the Afghan capital, about 50 mainly female protesters gathered outside Kabul University, holding banners and chanting, “Education is our right, universities should be opened.”

The previous day, students at Nangahar University in eastern Afghanistan also demonstrated and male medical students walked out of exams in protest at their female classmates being excluded.

The Taliban has defended the restrictions, saying that they aim to preserve the “national interest” and women’s “honour”.

Acting Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim, in his first comments on the matter, told Afghan state broadcaster RTA that several issues had prompted the decision, including female students not wearing appropriate Islamic attire and interactions between students of different genders.

“They didn’t observe hijab, they were coming with the clothes that mostly women wear to go to a wedding,” he said.

Nadim also said during the interview that discussions over female education were ongoing.

Meanwhile, the decision continues to draw widespread criticism, with the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations saying gender persecution may amount to a crime against humanity, in a statement on Thursday slamming the Taliban’s decree.

In Washington, Blinken also said the ban would harm any chance of the Taliban improving its relationships with other countries.

“Any prospect that the Taliban seeks for improved relations with the world, with the international community, which is something that they want and we know that they need – that is not going to happen if they continue on this course,” he said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

‘Being a girl is a heavy crime’: Afghan women in despair over university ban

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Zahra Joya

The Guardian

Wed 21 Dec 2022 07.45 EST

Taliban prohibit female higher education indefinitely amid international condemnation

It was late evening in Kabul, and Sabra*, a fourth-year medical student, saw a WhatsApp message appear on her phone. In a university chat group for 38 classmates, a friend had shared a news report suggesting the Taliban had banned women from higher education. “Girls, what’s going on here?” the friend wrote. “Is it true?”

On Tuesday, Afghanistan’s ministry of higher education issued a letter to all government and private universities, ordering an indefinite ban on university education for women. The country’s hardline Islamist rulers had already banned most female Afghan teenagers from secondary school education.

Sabra said the news felt like cold water. “I studied with all my heart for four years,” she said, speaking by telephone from Kabul. “I only had one year left to graduate from university.”

The decision was quickly and globally condemned, with the International Rescue Committee denouncing the ban as a “chilling step backwards for Afghanistan”. The US government said it was unacceptable, with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announcing that he was “deeply dismayed”.

Rina Amiri, a US special envoy for Afghan women and girls, said the ban removed any doubt that the Taliban were reverting to the extreme policies they enacted in the 1990s, when they last controlled Afghanistan.

“The world must reject, as Afghans have, that this is about culture or religion. In Afghan history, only the Taliban have enacted policies forbidding girls’ education. In no Muslim-majority country, in no place in the world, are girls denied an education,” Amiri wrote on Twitter.

“We are at an inflection point. As a global community, we must take a firm stand against these extreme policies. Failing to do so could embolden the Taliban, inspire hardliners elsewhere [and] imperil the rights of women, girls and at-risk populations far beyond Afghanistan.”

On Wednesday morning, staff and security at universities in Kabul were turning away female students who had arrived to study. In the eastern city of Jalalabad, video footage showed groups of men and women protesting outside a campus.

Sabra said she had heard rumours months ago that the Taliban would ban women from higher education but said she could not believe it. “Was this not my right as a girl who came here … with money from embroidering and weaving carpets and who wanted to become a doctor?

“It’s 4:30 in the morning Kabul time, and I could not sleep for a moment tonight,” she said. “I can’t hold back my tears.”

Another female student wrote on Facebook she was also having trouble sleeping. Sakina Sama said it had taken three years after leaving secondary school to persuade her father to agree to let her enrol in a university, only to now be banned by the government.

“Being a girl is a heavy crime and tonight I want to curse my creator for creating me so that I can be so miserable and humiliated,” she wrote. “No words can express my anger tonight. Goodbye life.”

A number of Afghan civil and women’s rights activists abroad have issued a joint statement calling for the Taliban to reverse “this medieval crime” that will “impose absolute isolation on Afghan women and girls and expose women to violence, poverty and exploitation”.

Afghanistan’s former intelligence chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, who is now in exile, wrote on Twitter that the Taliban sought with the ban “to keep society in the dark because they consider their survival and growth dependent on the ignorance of the young generation”.

Another female student, Zainab Rezaei, 23, learned about the closure of universities to girls through Facebook. Enrolled at a private university in Kabul, Rezaei said that in the past year she comforted her sister, who is in grade 11 and was not allowed to go to school after the earlier ban on girls. But now she is also stuck at home.

“I was at my aunt’s house tonight,” she said, adding that her mother called her to tell her to stay strong. “I was very sad and I don’t know what our future will be. I feel full of hatred.”

Rezaei, whose father died three years ago, said she had worked hard to continue her education but the Taliban had now taken away this right.

“My heart hurts. All my hard work is worth nothing,” she said. “No matter how hard we girls work, it doesn’t pay off.”

*Name has been changed to protect identity

Afghan women weep as Taliban fighters enforce university ban

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Associated Press

20 Dec 2022

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban security forces in the Afghan capital on Wednesday enforced a higher education ban for women by blocking their access to universities, with video obtained by The Associated Press showing women weeping and consoling each other outside one campus in Kabul.

The country’s Taliban rulers a day earlier ordered women nationwide to stop attending private and public universities effective immediately and until further notice. The Taliban-led administration has not given a reason for the ban or reacted to the fierce and swift global condemnation of it.

Journalists saw Taliban forces outside four Kabul universities Wednesday. The forces stopped some women from entering, while allowing others to go in and finish their work. They also tried to prevent any photography, filming and protests from taking place.

Rahimullah Nadeem, a spokesman for Kabul University, confirmed that classes for female students had stopped. He said some women were allowed to enter the campus for paperwork and administrative reasons, and that four graduation ceremonies were held Wednesday.

Members of an activist group called the Unity and Solidarity of Afghanistan Women gathered outside the private Edrak University in Kabul on Wednesday morning, chanting slogans in Dari.

“Do not make education political!” they said. “Once again university is banned for women, we do not want to be eliminated!”

A letter shared by the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Ziaullah Hashmi, on Tuesday told private and public universities to implement the ban as soon as possible and to inform the ministry once the ban is in place.

The move is certain to hurt efforts by the Taliban to win international recognition for their government and aid from potential donors at a time when Afghanistan is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis. The international community has urged Taliban leaders to reopen schools and give women their right to public space.

Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan, all Muslim countries, have expressed their disappointment at the university ban and urged authorities to withdraw or reconsider their decision.

Qatar played a key role in facilitating the negotiations that led to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan last year. It called on the “Afghan caretaker government” to review the ban in line with the teachings of Islam on women’s education.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said late Tuesday that no other country in the world bars women and girls from receiving an education.

“The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all in Afghanistan,” he warned. “This decision will come with consequences for the Taliban.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department released a joint statement alongside the U.K., Canada, European Union and other Western allies that warned the ban further isolated Afghanistan’s rulers from the international community.

The head of the U.N. agency promoting women’s rights, Sima Bahous, said in a statement the move was part of a “comprehensive onslaught on women’s rights in Afghanistan” and called for its immediate reversal.

Afghanistan’s former president, Hamid Karzai, strongly condemned the university ban for women in a Tweet.

Abdallah Abdallah, a senior leader in Afghanistan’s former U.S.-allied government, described universal education as a “fundamental” right. He urged the country’s Taliban leadership to reconsider the decision.

Afghan political analyst Ahmad Saeedi said that the latest decision by the Taliban authorities may have closed the door to winning international acceptance.

“The issue of recognition is over,” he said. “The world is now trying to find an alternative. The world tried to interact more but they (the Taliban) don’t let the world talk to them about recognition.”

Saeedi said he believes most Afghans favor female education because they consider learning to be a religious command contained in the Quran.

He said the decision to bar women from universities was likely made by a handful of senior Taliban figures, including the leader Hibatullah Akhunzada, who are based in the southwestern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement.

He said the main center of power is Kandahar, rather than the Taliban-led government in Kabul, even if the ministers of justice, higher education and so-called “virtue and vice” would also have been involved in the decision to ban women from universities.

U.N. experts said last month that the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to a crime against humanity and should be investigated and prosecuted under international law.

They said the Taliban actions against females deepened existing rights violations — already the “most draconian globally” — and may constitute gender persecution, which is a crime against humanity.

The Taliban authorities have rejected the allegation.

Associated Press writer Riazat Butt contributed from Islamabad.

Timeline: Taliban crackdown on Afghan women’s education, rights

December 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

21 Dec 2022

Group has backtracked on promises to guarantee certain rights for girls and women since its return to power last year.

The Taliban has backtracked on their promise to guarantee the rights of girls to be educated and given other freedoms, returning to their previous policies when they were last in power.

The group, which took over Kabul 16 months ago, argues its rules are in keeping with their interpretation of Islam, although Afghanistan is the only Muslim country that prohibits girls from being educated.

Here is a timeline of its clampdown:

August 2021: The Taliban returns

The Taliban returns to power in Kabul on August 15 during a chaotic final exit of the United States-led foreign troops, ending a 20-year war and precipitating the collapse of the Western-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani.

The group promises to give Afghans more freedoms than their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, saying it will honour human rights obligations, including those of women.

September 2021: Gender-segregated classrooms

The Taliban announces on September 12 last year that women can attend universities with gender-segregated entrances and classrooms, but they can only be taught by professors of the same sex or old men. Other restrictions included the wearing of hijabs as part of a compulsory dress code.

March 2022: Girls barred from school

On March 23 this year, girls’ secondary schools were supposed to reopen, but the Taliban rescinded the directive and tens of thousands of teenagers were shut out and ordered to stay home.

May 2022: Stay at home

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhunzada orders women on May 7 to fully cover themselves, including their faces, in public and generally stay at home. Women are also banned from inter-city travel without a male escort.

August 2022: Protests break out

Taliban fighters beat women protesters chanting “bread, work and freedom” and fire into the air on August 13 to break up a demonstration outside the education ministry in Kabul.

The government forces also detain and beat journalists covering the protests.

November 2022: Parks out of bounds

Women are banned from entering parks, fun fairs, gyms and public baths.

December 2022: Execution, floggings

The Taliban carries out its first public execution since returning to power, that of a convicted murderer who is shot dead on December 7 by his victim’s father in western Farah province.

The next day, more than 1,000 people watch as 27 Afghans, including women, are flogged in Charikar in central Parwan province for a range of offences ranging from sodomy and deception to forgery and debauchery.

Floggings in public have since been regularly carried out in other provinces.

December 2022: No university for women

Armed guards stop hundreds of young women from entering university campuses on December 21, a day after a terse release from the minister for higher education announces an order “suspending the education of females until further notice”.

SOURCE: AFP

Taliban Release 2 Americans Detained in Afghanistan

December 21, 2022 Current News Articles

Dec. 21, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Taliban released two Americans who had been detained in Afghanistan on Tuesday, including Ivor Shearer, an independent filmmaker who had been held since August, according to a person with knowledge of the release.

The Biden administration did not confirm the name of either American, but an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail a sensitive process, said that both had been safely taken to Qatar and were en route to being reunited with their families.

Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said the release was not part of a prisoner exchange and that no money was paid for the Americans’ release. He said it appeared to be a “good-will gesture” on the part of the Taliban.

Mr. Shearer was arrested along with his Afghan producer, Faizullah Faizbakhsh, over the summer as they were filming near the site of a drone strike that had killed the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a media watchdog. The group said it had no information about whether Mr. Faizbakhsh was still being held.

The Americans’ release was first reported by CNN, and came as the Taliban moved to suspend university education for women. The release came almost two weeks after administration officials announced that Brittney Griner, an American basketball player, had been freed after months in Russian custody. Ms. Griner’s release was part of a prisoner swap in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer.

In September, an American engineer, Mark R. Frerichs, was freed from Afghanistan on the condition that the United States release Haji Bashir Noorzai, a prominent Afghan tribal leader who had been convicted of drug trafficking.

Officials in the Biden administration have spoken candidly about how much — and how unexpectedly — the issue of Americans detained overseas has occupied their time and resources. While only four countries held Americans wrongfully from 2001 to 2005, at least 19 countries do now, according to research complied by the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, the advocacy organization started by Diane Foley and named for her son, who was killed by terrorists in the Middle East.

“I had not fully anticipated the prominence that this responsibility would play in my job, but it has been very significant,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told The New York Times this week. Recently, Roger Carstens, the Biden administration’s top hostage negotiator, spoke publicly about what it was like to bring Ms. Griner home — she spent a large chunk of the 18-hour flight home chatting with him.

“It’s horrific to leave an American wrongfully detained in a foreign jail cell,” Mr. Carstens said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” last week.

The Biden administration is also working to free Paul Whelan, another American imprisoned in Russia. Activists saw Mr. Shearer’s arrest as a chilling sign of the Taliban’s approach to the news media after the group seized power in Afghanistan last year. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mr. Shearer and Mr. Faizbakhsh were stopped by Taliban intelligence officials in August, blindfolded and taken into detention.

“The Taliban’s increasing pressure and escalating numbers of detentions of journalists and media workers, including the detention of American filmmaker Ivor Shearer and his Afghan colleague Faizullah Faizbakhsh, show the group’s utter lack of commitment to the principle of freedom of the press in Afghanistan,” Carlos Martinez de la Serna, the group’s program director, said in a statement at the time.

As he oversaw the chaotic and violent drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan last year, Mr. Biden said American officials were relying on commitments by the Taliban to allow people to leave the country. The Taliban have agreed to release several imprisoned Americans this year, but continues to clash with the United States over access to humanitarian aid and the seizure of funds from Afghanistan’s central bank after the Taliban took over.

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent, covering life in the Biden administration, Washington culture and domestic policy. She joined The Times in 2014.

Taliban Bar Women From College Classes, in a Stark Reversal of Rights

December 21, 2022 Current News Articles

By Christina Goldbaum and Najim Rahim

The New York Times

Dec. 21, 2022

The new Afghan government has returned to its hard-line stances from the 1990s, instituting public beatings and executions as well further restricting women’s rights.

The Afghan government on Tuesday barred women from attending private and public universities, officials said, in the latest severe blow to women’s rights under a Taliban administration that has all but reinstituted the hard-line rule the group maintained during its first stretch in power during the 1990s.

The move is the most recent sign that the Taliban’s leadership has cast aside any intent to moderate, and it is the realization of fears that 20 years of Western human rights and governance initiatives would be undone after the Taliban took power last year. The new government in recent weeks has reinstated Shariah law, carried out public floggings across the country and conducted one public execution.

All that is likely to threaten the influx of badly needed international aid that has kept Afghanistan from the brink of famine as it grapples with a devastating economic collapse.

The news on Tuesday, delivered in a letter from the higher education ministry and confirmed by the ministry’s spokesman to The New York Times, was crushing to Afghan women who had been raised in an era of relative opportunity, but who have seen those rights slowly erased since the Western-backed government collapsed late in the summer of 2021.

In March, the new government reneged on promises to allow girls to attend public high schools, with officials saying they needed more time to create a plan for them to reopen in accordance with Islamic law. Many high-school-aged girls had held out hope that their schools would reopen because universities had continued to allow women to attend classes.

But the decision on Tuesday stamped out any vestige of that hope.

“The university was the only window of hope for me, but today we are stuck in such a black hole,” said Sakina Sama, 22, a second-year university student studying journalism in Balkh Province, in northern Afghanistan.

Ms. Sama had worked in a photo and video studio under the previous Western-backed government. But she lost her job when the Taliban seized power and restricted women to jobs mostly in education and health care, serving fellow women. Continuing her education was her only joy since the Taliban seized power, she said.

“I have no more hope or motivation left,” she said. “If being a girl is a sin, and I was born a girl, it is not my fault.”

Farhanaz, 19, who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of retribution, said that after the Taliban seized power last year, she nearly lost her motivation to study as she watched the new government roll out a flood of edicts rolling back women’s freedoms.

Girls were banned from high schools, and women from public spaces like parks. The morality police appeared on the streets chastising women who were not covered from head to toe in all-concealing burqas and headpieces in public.

Farhanaz said she and her friends had clung to hope that the new government would eventually return to its early pledges to moderate and allow women to retain a place in society, as officials sought international recognition for their administration.

Then on Tuesday a letter by the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Hafez Ziaullah Hashemi, began circulating on social media, instructing private and public universities to suspend women from attending university classes until further notice. Mr. Hashemi said that the decision was made by the cabinet of the new government and ordered universities to inform the ministry once they had dismissed all female students.

For Farhanaz and her sister — an 18-year-old who had just been accepted to a university psychology program — the news was devastating. She said her sister had locked herself in her room, sobbing at the news.

“Now I don’t even have the motivation to survive,” Farhanaz said.

Western officials condemned the government’s action on Tuesday.

“This unacceptable stance will have significant consequences for the Taliban,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said at a news conference in Washington. Mr. Price would not give details on what penalties the United States or its allies might impose.

Even as the world was receiving news of the latest hard-line government ruling, another decision was unfolding: Mr. Price said that in what appeared to be a good-will gesture, Afghan officials had released two Americans who had been detained in the country. Mr. Price did not identify the freed Americans, and he said that their release was not part of a prisoner or detainee swap and that no ransom or payment had been involved.

The ruling on women’s rights was another point of evidence that ideological hard-liners within the Taliban movement have been imposing their influence over those who have urged moderation and engagement with the international community.

Since the first months of Taliban governance began in August last year, initial promises by officials to preserve the right to education and employment for women have given way to increasingly conservative edicts, including by the supreme leader of the Taliban movement, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Sheikh Haibatullah, who is based in Kandahar, the southern heartland of the Taliban movement, has appointed allies to government posts — including the ministries of education and higher education — and sought counsel from ultraconservative clerics.

In recent months, his allies have pushed policies including the appointment of thousands of religious scholars to government offices, the waiving of standard academic requirements for former Taliban fighters in universities, and the implementation of harsh interpretations of Shariah law that the first Taliban government enforced in the 1990s.

For many Afghans, the return to hard-line justice has been chilling.

This month, Mohammad Shaker Hashimi, a truck driver in Charikar, a city north of Kabul, awoke to the sound of announcements from loudspeakers summoning residents to the city’s stadium at 9 a.m. for a “punishment ceremony.”

He walked to the stadium and joined a crowd of around 400 people, he said. After instructing the crowd not to take photos or videos, local officials escorted 18 men with hands tied behind their backs and nine women clad in all-concealing blue burqas onto the field and separated them by gender.

Two judges gave a speech about Shariah law and explained the prisoners’ crimes: Women were charged with running away from home and moral corruption, while the men were found guilty of theft, adultery and selling drugs, among other crimes, Mr. Hashimi said. Then the officials began to whip them — between 20 and 39 lashes each.

“When they beat the women with cables, one of the women fell to the ground, and I could not watch more and left,” Mr. Hashimi said.

He said that a wave of hope brought by the end of the long war was being bitterly undone in recent weeks, bringing a sense of helplessness.

“In the past, there had been explosions and suicide attacks, and we thought that the war and violence were over,” he said. But now, he added, “the torture of people has resumed in public.”

Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Edward Wong from Washington.

Christina Goldbaum is a correspondent in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau.

Najim Rahim is a reporter in the Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau

Associated Press

August 2021: The Taliban returns

September 2021: Gender-segregated classrooms

March 2022: Girls barred from school

May 2022: Stay at home

August 2022: Protests break out

November 2022: Parks out of bounds

December 2022: Execution, floggings

December 2022: No university for women

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