Dozens of girls and women demonstrated this Saturday (26) in Kabul, with the slogan “open schools”, to protest against the Taliban’s decision to close secondary schools hours after they opened these schools.
On March 23, thousands of Afghan teenagers happily arrived at schools, after the Ministry of Education ordered the resumption of classes.
However, a few hours later, the authorities announced that they had reversed the decision, which disappointed and angered the students and generated outrage from foreign governments.
Afghan teenagers have been without access to education for seven months.
“Open the schools!” shouted the protesters, some of them clutching their schoolbooks.
Many carried placards with the message “Education is our fundamental right, not a political plan,” before dispersing after the Taliban arrived.
The Taliban did not explain the retreat, which took place after a meeting of senior cadres in the southern city of Kandahar, which is the de facto capital and spiritual center for this radical Islamic group.
The plan to open schools to women was established after months of working with foreign governments to support teacher pay.
Since returning to power on Aug. 15, the Taliban have rolled back decades of advances in women’s rights, who have been removed from many government jobs, barred from traveling alone and forced to abide by a dress code in line with a strict interpretation of the law. Quran.
The United States expects the Taliban to reverse its decision to exclude teenagers from schools in Afghanistan “in the coming days,” US envoy to the country, Thomas West, said Saturday.
“I trust that we will see the reversal of this decision in the coming days,” said the American outside the Forum in Doha, capital of Qatar.
The United States canceled talks with the Taliban hardliners due to this ban.
“Wednesday’s setback surprised me… This is, first of all, a violation of the trust of the Afghan people,” West said.
“Our policy is not against the education of girls,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told AFP.
According to him, there were “some practical problems” that “were not resolved before the deadline” scheduled for the opening of high schools on March 23.
Observers fear that the country’s new leaders will again ban girls from schooling, as they did during their first regime, from 1996 to 2001.
For Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Pakistani Taliban when she was 15, this time it will be “much harder” for them to keep schools closed.
The difference from before is that “women saw what it meant to be educated”.
