Taliban order closure of Afghan girls' secondary schools

Afghanistan's Ministry of Education has announced through a notice on Wednesday that girls' schools will remain closed until a plan is worked out in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture, government news agency Bakhtar News reported. "We inform all girls' secondary schools and those schools that have female students above the sixth class that they are out until the next order," the notice said.

Education ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan, reacting to the change, said "they are not allowed to comment on this". The behaviour of many women in Kabul upon learning of the ban has been different, with women demonstrating in several schools.

Girls protesting after the Taliban locked them out of their schools, again. pic.twitter.com/im5zEi9rfo

— Heather Barr (@heatherbarr1) March 23, 2022

This announcement comes after the Ministry of Education announced last week that schools for all students would open on Wednesday, including women and girls. So much so that days before the reopening, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education congratulated all students on their return to school. However, this return to classes was marked by "some conditions for girls", including teaching them separately from men and only by female teachers.

The Taliban's announcement of an indefinite ban on women's and girls' access to schools has already had an impact on several international bodies. "We hear disturbing reports that the authorities will not invite female students above the sixth grade to return to school. If true, what is the reason?" tweeted the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons. This organisation has also made public its condemnation of this change of decision, something that the US chargé d'affaires in Afghanistan, Ian McCary, has also done. "This is very disappointing and contradicts many assurances and statements by the Taliban," he said.

Since the Taliban seized power in August last year, all girls' schools have been closed, except for the youngest girls who were able to resume classes two months later. The reason for this closure was due to the Taliban's radical ideals of "Sharia" or Islamic law, through which they established control over women by segregating them, banning them from many jobs, controlling the clothes they wear and restricting them from travelling alone.

This is why these decisions regarding women's education could be along the lines of those already taken by the Taliban the last time they ruled the country, from 1996 to 2001, when they banned women's education and most women's jobs. This time, however, the international community has seen girls' education as a key demand for any future recognition of the Taliban administration. 

But the demands for girls' education in Afghanistan come up against another problem: the shortage of teachers. Most teachers fled the country when the Taliban came to power. "We need thousands of teachers and to solve this problem we are trying to recruit new teachers on a temporary basis," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Education.