KABUL: The Taliban ordered girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut Wednesday just hours after they reopened, an official confirmed, sparking confusion and heartbreak over the policy reversal by the group.
The Taliban will allow girls around Afghanistan to return to class when high schools open next week, an education official had said last Thursday, after months of uncertainty over whether the group would allow full access to education for girls and women.
“Yes, it’s true,” Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani told AFP when asked to confirm reports that girls had been ordered home.
He would not immediately explain the reasoning, while education ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan said: “We are not allowed to comment on this”.
Crestfallen students, back in class for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August last year, tearfully packed up their belongings and filed out.
The international community has made the right to education for all a sticking point in negotiations over aid and recognition of the new Taliban regime.
“I see my students crying and reluctant to leave classes,” said Palwasha, a teacher at Omra Khan girls’ school in Kabul.
“It is very painful to see your students crying.”
United Nations envoy Deborah Lyons called reports of the closure “disturbing”.
“If true, what could possibly be the reason?” she tweeted.
On Wednesday, the order for girls’ secondary schools to resume appeared to only be patchily observed, with reports emerging from some parts of the country — including the Taliban´s spiritual heartland of Kandahar — that classes would restart next month instead.
But several did reopen in the capital and elsewhere, including Herat and Panjshir — temporarily at least.
“All the students that we are seeing today are very happy, and they are here with open eyes,” Latifa Hamdard, principal of Gawharshad Begum High School in Herat, .
The education ministry said reopening the schools was always a government objective and the Taliban were not bowing to international pressure.
“We are doing it as part of our responsibility to provide education and other facilities to our students,” ministry spokesman Rayan said.
The Taliban had insisted they wanted to ensure schools for girls aged 12 to 19 were segregated and would operate according to Islamic principles.
