[Several Kabul University faculty
members and students, reached at home Wednesday, expressed deep concern about
the hardening Taliban stance on women’s access to public universities. Two
weeks ago, the new minister of higher education stated flatly, “We will not
allow coeducation.” Some private universities have already switched to divided
classrooms.]
By Pamela Constable,
EmailBioFollow and Haq Nawaz
Khan
The normally bustling campus was
deserted and silent on Wednesday. Classes have been suspended; only male staff
have been allowed to work on research or office tasks.
The directives reflect a harsh new
education policy imposed by the Taliban, in which females may be present on
campuses only if they wear traditional Islamic garb and do not share space with
male students.
[Taliban
minister says women can attend university, but not alongside men]
Senior government spokesman Bilal
Karimi said authorities were “working on a comprehensive plan to ensure a
peaceful environment for female students.” After that plan is finalized, he
told The Washington Post in a voice message, “they would be allowed to continue
their education.”
Several Kabul University faculty
members and students, reached at home Wednesday, expressed deep concern about
the hardening Taliban stance on women’s access to public universities. Two
weeks ago, the new minister of higher education stated flatly, “We will not
allow coeducation.” Some private universities have already switched to divided
classrooms
“It makes me very sad,” said Javeda
Ahmed, a longtime professor at Kabul University, who said she taught girls at
home during the first Taliban regime. She noted that the university has far
fewer female than male teachers, making it impossible to divide them evenly. If
men can’t teach the girls, then who will?” she asked. “Where will their
knowledge go?”
One social sciences student, who
asked to be identified only by her nickname, Fari, for fear of Taliban
retaliation, said she has stayed at home for weeks, waiting for the university
to allow her to return, but has grown increasingly discouraged. “I had lots of
plans for my future, but we are not being told when the doors will be reopening
for us,” she said.
Adding to the uncertainty were
messages that appeared this week on a Twitter account in the name of Mohammad
Ashraf Ghairat, appointed last week as the university’s chancellor. One warned
that women would not be able to allowed to attend universities or work.
Some suggested the messages were
the work of an impostor. On Wednesday, new tweets appeared on the account
saying the user was a 20-year-old student of the law and political science
faculty who had been “pretending to be the new chancellor” with “fake” words
that he hoped would “awaken Afghans, and the world to put pressure on Taliban
to open the schools and universities.”
[Afghans
bury paintings and hide books out of fear of Taliban crackdown on arts and
culture]
Even when couched as a measure to
protect women, the repeated official emphasis on gender segregation — and the
lack of any mention of how long it will take to reconfigure classrooms — has
added to growing fear that the Taliban government intends to sharply curtail
women’s activities and opportunities, as the group did when it ruled from 1996
to 2001.
Since regaining power after the
departure of U.S. forces in August, Taliban leaders have promised they will
allow civilians more freedom this time, and in some ways they have. Women have
been strolling and shopping in Kabul without covering their faces, which once
would have risked a beating by Taliban police. Girls have been allowed to
attend school through grade 6; under previous Taliban rule they could not
attend at all.
Taliban officials have said
repeatedly they will grant women rights “within the framework of sharia law,”
but their signals have been mixed and shifting. Initially, they said women
should not return to work until the urban environment was secure; conditions
today are much safer, but there’s no sign of any policy change.
The new government has revived its
once-feared ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice —
setting it up in the shuttered Ministry of Women’s Affairs — and one Taliban
founder recently said the government would resume public amputations and
executions for offenses that include adultery.
By taking these measures, the
Taliban government risks jeopardizing future economic support from Western
donors and governments, which have made the rights of women and girls a litmus
test for resuming significant aid. Afghanistan, already one of the world’s
poorest countries, is struggling with a stalled economy and a postwar
humanitarian crisis. Many people are jobless or displaced by fighting; others
have gone unpaid for months.
Taliban officials have denounced
foreign governments for imposing their values, especially regarding the role of
women, on Afghan society. Karimi said Western criticism of Afghan female
education policies “is not a right way to interfere in our internal affairs.”
Many faculty members objected when
Ghairat was appointed last week by the Taliban to replace a widely respected
academic; around 70 quit their jobs in protest while others supported him.
Critics noted that Ghairat studied at Kabul University when it was coeducational,
graduating in 2008.
A second aggravation for university
staff is that many have not been paid in several months, and the Taliban has
shut down faculty and staff unions. With cash running out at Afghan banks, most
public employees are receiving only a fraction of their normal pay.
The new gender segregation policy
has triggered a mix of reactions from faculty. Some, including men, adamantly
oppose the Taliban’s insistence on total separation, saying it will degrade the
quality of university education. The new higher education minister, Abdul Baqi
Haqqani, has questioned the importance of higher education, pointing out that
the new Taliban leaders have succeeded without academic degrees.
[How
Afghanistan’s security forces lost the war]
Kabul University, founded in 1932,
was virtually abandoned during the 1990s, when a civil war destroyed much of
the capital and the Taliban took power. After democratic rule returned in 2001,
the university was slowly rebuilt and modernized. That effort was strongly
supported by U.S. donations, which paid to restore its sharia law library as
well as the faculties of medicine and political science. Other public
university branches were opened or rebuilt, including in once-isolated
provincial cities such as Khost.
“Students tell us there is no
future for education under the Taliban,” said one professor, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “Some have left for Iran or
Pakistan, even those in their third or fourth years. They say their degrees
will have no value, and anyone now can hold a senior position without a proper
education.”
Others said they would prefer
coeducational classes but it’s more important that women be able to continue
studying, even if they’re segregated from men. Some said that there were
problems with male students harassing female classmates, and that the campus
had become too polarized in recent years between liberal and religious
factions.
“I believe in coeducation and I
don’t see a logical reason for separation,” said Shah Kpalwakh, 35, a
journalism professor who studied at the university after Taliban rule. He said
the institution had acquired extensive resources for teaching modern
journalism.
“If the Islamic Emirate wants to
bring a new policy and a new curriculum, we will follow it,” he said. “But we
hope it doesn’t bring more disorder for all of us.”
Khan reported from Peshawar,
Pakistan. Ellen Francis in London contributed to this report.
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