“It creates a lot of challenges in terms of how is the world going to engage with them and try to stop Afghans from starving when there’s no space to negotiate and convince the Taliban to shave off even the sharpest edges of their rights abuses,” said Heather Barr, the associate director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch.
The United States and United Nations both condemned Wednesday’s decision.
“I’m deeply troubled by multiple reports that the Taliban are not allowing girls above grade 6 to return to school,” tweetedIan McCary is the chief of mission for U.S. Embassy Kabul. He is currently based in Doha, Qatar. “This is very disappointing & contradicts many Taliban assurances & statements.”
Many Afghan girls waited months for news that they would be allowed to go back to school after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan. Taliban officials advised only male students to report to schools for grades 7-12 in September. They stated that girls would be allowed into the classroom after security improvements and enough female teachers were available to keep the classes completely segregated.
Later, Taliban officials insisted that Afghan girls and women would be able to go back to school in March, and many Western officials seized on that promise as a deadline that would have repercussions for the Taliban’s efforts to eventually secure international recognition and the lifting of at least some sanctions.
In recent months, the Taliban had also come under mounting pressure to permit girls to attend high school from international donors, aid from which has helped keep Afghanistan from plunging further into a humanitarian catastrophe set off by the collapse of the former government and Western sanctions that crippled the country’s banking system.
One video shared on social media Wednesday showed a Kabul high school student crying after a local TV reporter asked her how she felt about the news that she couldn’t return to school.
“I swear to God I wept, but today I was very upset. What can I say? I can’t say anything. What do we do with them?” she responded, referring to the Taliban.
Safiullah PadshahReport from Kabul Christina GoldbaumDubai Najim RahimHouston contributed reporting
Source: NY Times
