A thousand days since the Taliban’s school ban for Afghan girls and the loss of potential is a catastrophe

Afghanistan is set to mark 1,000 dark days since the Taliban banned girls from attending school beyond the age of 12, dimming any prospect of women being allowed back into the formal education system in the near future.

Soon after overthrowing the previous democratically elected government backed by the US and its Western military partners in August 2021, the Taliban banned more than a million girls from attending secondary school. It later banned women from attending university as well.

Saturday 8 June marks the 1,000th day of the ban.

After initially indicating a willingness to reopen the schools, the Taliban warned in March they might never allow them to function again, at least not in the way they did under the Ashraf Ghani administration.

The hardline Islamist group similarly prohibited formal education for women when it ruled in the 1990s. As a justification for the ban, the Taliban claim that Islamic law doesn’t allow for free mixing of men and women.

The ongoing ban on their formal education has confined many girls and women to their homes and left them vulnerable to early marriage.

“Many families believe the only solution for their daughters is to arrange their marriage,” said Salma Niazi, an Afghan journalist now living in exile.

“When I talk to women who were studying journalism in Afghanistan, they tell me, ‘Please hire us in small positions so we are not married off to old men.’ By denying women their basic rights, including the right to education, you violate human rights and stifle our society’s potential.”

Afghan women and human rights advocates have said the country might never fully recover from the loss of these 1,000 days.

“The potential lost in this time – artists, doctors, poets and engineers who will never get to lend their country their skills – cannot be replaced. Every additional day, more dreams die,” said Heather Barr, associate director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch.

She warned of a dark future for the country without any female doctors, teachers and public servants.

The Taliban said in 2021 that certain conditions had to be created for girls and women to return to school, but its ministers have made no progress in that direction.

“What is even more alarming is that there is no end in sight. The Taliban are solidifying and intensifying their control and crackdown on women and girls,” Ms Barr told The Independent.

“At a time we need to have a serious international response, we’re seeing the world moving on and normalising the Taliban.”

At the last round of negotiations on the future of Afghanistan in Doha in February, the Taliban pulled out after the UN refused to remove Afghan civil society members from the forum and treat the Islamist group’s envoys as if they were the legitimate rulers of the country.

The Taliban are not yet recognised as Afghanistan’s government by any nation and the UN has said recognition would be almost impossible so long as the bans on women’s education and employment remain.

The next round of negotiations is due later this month and the Taliban are expected to seek a seat at the UN even though they haven’t made a commitment to lift the prohibition on women’s education and employment.

Ms Barr accused the UN of being overly accommodating of the Islamist group’s demands.

“We are watching the UN bending over backwards, twisting into a pretzel trying to make the Taliban happy and come to Doha and make all sorts of concessions,” she said. “This is not how we expect the UN to engage abusive misogynists who created the world’s biggest rights crisis.”

Absence of women’s education as a subject of discussion at the Doha forum would prove detrimental, she said.

“How can you even talk about economic targets, counterterrorism and narcotics when every day that goes by is a day where women can’t leave homes to breathe fresh air? How are other governments even able to talk about anything else?”

The Taliban have encouraged female students to attend traditional religious schools called madrasas but many Afghan women have said this was worse than having no school at all.

“Education is our right and we will keep fighting for it with courage. The world is watching and we call on the international community to support Afghan women in this fight for our future and dignity,” Ms Niazi said.