Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan banned women from universities—the latest in a series of measures which mark the descent of an iron veil over Afghanistan.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
25 December, 2022
Representational image. | Afghan Refugee Women Association members hold placards during a protest at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi on 16 August 2021. | Photo: ANI
From the high walls of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the portraits of the country’s kings looked down on the journalists who trooped into Kabul after 9/11, in the weeks after the fall of the Taliban. There was just one painting—taken from a photograph of king Amanullah Khan—which included the queen consort. The artist, anthropologist Julie Billaud observed, had chosen to paint a traditional wedding veil over queen Soraya Tarzi’s face, flowing down to the floor.
Late in August 1928, Tarzi had torn off her veil at a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of tribal elders, after a speech where the king had declared “Islam did not require women to cover their bodies or wear any special kind of covering.” Tarzi set up the country’s first schools and hospitals for women. The portrait represented the erasure of Tarzi’s dramatic rebellion against tradition—a radicalism too deep even for the new republic.
Earlier this week, the reborn Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan banned women from universities—the latest in a series of measures which mark the descent of an iron veil over Afghanistan. Girls have been banned from high schools, the United Nations says, and gender-segregation rules are denying women access to work and even healthcare. Forced marriages—often to ageing Taliban commanders—have become common.
The Taliban had promised, before taking power, to allow the education of women to continue, and vowed to “guarantee the legal and human rights of every child, woman and man.” Their failure to keep their promises has led to loud condemnation in world capitals—but the international community is offering Afghanistan’s women little more than pieties. Even scholarships for women have been restricted in India, and many other countries.
“Women are half of society and they’re disregarded,” one woman told the researchers Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada. “How can a bird fly on only one wing?”
The politics of gender apartheid
Ever since the cleric Nida Muhammad Nadim took charge as the Islamic Emirate’s higher education minister in October, he began working to dismantle the last traces of Tarzi’s legacy. Last month, the minister assailed Amanullah for “bringing debauchery and obscenity from foreign lands.” Educating women, he argued, “clashed with Islam and Afghan values.” Following the decision to close college gates to women, Nadim complained that students “wore dresses like they are going to a wedding ceremony.”
The higher education minister also argued against examination tests for Taliban candidates who were seeking jobs. A Taliban’s true qualification, he insisted, was the “number of bombs” he had detonated.
Like many of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Emirate, Nadim is a member of a small circle of clerics from the southern Kandahar region grouped around its emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada. The key figures in the group include Mohammad Khalid Haqqani, the head of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—responsible for enforcing theocratic norms—as well as chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani and minister of religious affairs Nur Muhammad Saqeb.
Few details have emerged on Nadim’s background, but the 1977-born cleric is thought to have run a seminary in Kandahar, before joining the Taliban insurgency after 9/11. Earlier, he served as regional governor for Nangarhar and Kabul.
The hard line on educating women, some argue, is enmeshed with a power-struggle within the Taliban, with rival factions using religion as an instrument to assert their legitimacy. Earlier this year, Akhundzada ordered judges to rigorously enforce shari’a-law punishments, including flogging and amputations—restituting the savagely-coercive legal system used to subjugate women before 9/11.
Even earlier, though, the Islamic Emirate had taken an ambiguous posture on educating girls—notably, by resiling on a promise to reopen high schools after a meeting of top leaders failed to reach a consensus. The previous minister for higher education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani—linked to the eastern Afghan networks of Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani—had said women could continue to study at university, but in gender-segregated classrooms. Abdul Baqi, however, insisted formal education was “less valuable” than clerical instruction.
Top Taliban leaders—among them health minister Qalandar Ebad, deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, and spokesperson Suhail Shaheen—sent their own daughters for higher education, casting it as an Islamic duty.
Facing resentment against Taliban commanders enriched by power in Kabul—in an increasingly poor country—the southern Afghan clerics responded by pushing the anti-modern values of their peasant constituencies.
Even after a democratic government was instituted following 9/11, resistance against education for girls remained widespread in swathes of rural Afghanistan. The United Nations noted last year that the number of girls in higher education increased from only 5,000 in 2001 to just around 90,000 in 2018. Teachers and students remained concentrated in urban areas.
Also read: Pakistan can’t fight its real enemy Taliban so it’s turning to politically useful enemy India
From the high walls of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the portraits of the country’s kings looked down on the journalists who trooped into Kabul after 9/11, in the weeks after the fall of the Taliban. There was just one painting—taken from a photograph of king Amanullah Khan—which included the queen consort. The artist, anthropologist Julie Billaud observed, had chosen to paint a traditional wedding veil over queen Soraya Tarzi’s face, flowing down to the floor.
Late in August 1928, Tarzi had torn off her veil at a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of tribal elders, after a speech where the king had declared “Islam did not require women to cover their bodies or wear any special kind of covering.” Tarzi set up the country’s first schools and hospitals for women. The portrait represented the erasure of Tarzi’s dramatic rebellion against tradition—a radicalism too deep even for the new republic.
Earlier this week, the reborn Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan banned women from universities—the latest in a series of measures which mark the descent of an iron veil over Afghanistan. Girls have been banned from high schools, the United Nations says, and gender-segregation rules are denying women access to work and even healthcare. Forced marriages—often to ageing Taliban commanders—have become common.
The Taliban had promised, before taking power, to allow the education of women to continue, and vowed to “guarantee the legal and human rights of every child, woman and man.” Their failure to keep their promises has led to loud condemnation in world capitals—but the international community is offering Afghanistan’s women little more than pieties. Even scholarships for women have been restricted in India, and many other countries.
“Women are half of society and they’re disregarded,” one woman told the researchers Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada. “How can a bird fly on only one wing?”
The politics of gender apartheid
Ever since the cleric Nida Muhammad Nadim took charge as the Islamic Emirate’s higher education minister in October, he began working to dismantle the last traces of Tarzi’s legacy. Last month, the minister assailed Amanullah for “bringing debauchery and obscenity from foreign lands.” Educating women, he argued, “clashed with Islam and Afghan values.” Following the decision to close college gates to women, Nadim complained that students “wore dresses like they are going to a wedding ceremony.”
The higher education minister also argued against examination tests for Taliban candidates who were seeking jobs. A Taliban’s true qualification, he insisted, was the “number of bombs” he had detonated.
Like many of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Emirate, Nadim is a member of a small circle of clerics from the southern Kandahar region grouped around its emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada. The key figures in the group include Mohammad Khalid Haqqani, the head of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—responsible for enforcing theocratic norms—as well as chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani and minister of religious affairs Nur Muhammad Saqeb.
Few details have emerged on Nadim’s background, but the 1977-born cleric is thought to have run a seminary in Kandahar, before joining the Taliban insurgency after 9/11. Earlier, he served as regional governor for Nangarhar and Kabul.
The hard line on educating women, some argue, is enmeshed with a power-struggle within the Taliban, with rival factions using religion as an instrument to assert their legitimacy. Earlier this year, Akhundzada ordered judges to rigorously enforce shari’a-law punishments, including flogging and amputations—restituting the savagely-coercive legal system used to subjugate women before 9/11.
Even earlier, though, the Islamic Emirate had taken an ambiguous posture on educating girls—notably, by resiling on a promise to reopen high schools after a meeting of top leaders failed to reach a consensus. The previous minister for higher education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani—linked to the eastern Afghan networks of Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani—had said women could continue to study at university, but in gender-segregated classrooms. Abdul Baqi, however, insisted formal education was “less valuable” than clerical instruction.
Top Taliban leaders—among them health minister Qalandar Ebad, deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, and spokesperson Suhail Shaheen—sent their own daughters for higher education, casting it as an Islamic duty.
Facing resentment against Taliban commanders enriched by power in Kabul—in an increasingly poor country—the southern Afghan clerics responded by pushing the anti-modern values of their peasant constituencies.
Even after a democratic government was instituted following 9/11, resistance against education for girls remained widespread in swathes of rural Afghanistan. The United Nations noted last year that the number of girls in higher education increased from only 5,000 in 2001 to just around 90,000 in 2018. Teachers and students remained concentrated in urban areas.
Also read: Pakistan can’t fight its real enemy Taliban so it’s turning to politically useful enemy India
With the Taliban's latest move, the highest level of education an Afghan girl can get is 6th grade
December 25, 2022
NPR
Heard on All Things Considered
7-Minute Listen
NPR's Andrew Limbong speaks with Pashtana Durrani, executive director of LEARN — a nonprofit that helps Afghan girls access education.
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