Senior Taliban official hits out at own group’s policies towards women

A senior Taliban official has called on the militant group to open schools for women and girls, a rare sign of internal divisions around one of the flagship policies of Afghanistan’s de facto rulers.

Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s acting deputy foreign minister, said the edict forbidding girls and women from schools was not in line with Sharia law as claimed.

“We request the leaders of the Islamic Emirate to open the doors of education,” he said, claiming that “there is no excuse for this and never will be”. “In the time of the Prophet Muhammad, the doors of knowledge were open to both men and women,” the Taliban minister said at a Madrassa graduation ceremony in Khost province.

The 62-year-old UN-sanctioned official said his own leaders were “committing injustice against 20 million people”, referring to the women who make up roughly half of the Afghan population.

“We have deprived them of all their rights; they have no inheritance rights, no share in determining their husband’s rights, they are sacrificed in forced marriages, they are not allowed to study, they cannot go to mosques, the doors of universities and schools are closed to them, and they are not allowed in religious schools either,” the acting deputy foreign minister said.

After taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban pledged to govern the country based on a moderate interpretation of Sharia law, and to maintain many of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by women under the previous Western-backed government. Yet within months they had shut classes for girls beyond grade six, and colleges were closed to female students at the end of 2022. In some cases students were sent home at gun-point.

Mr Stanikzai led a team of negotiators at the Taliban’s political office in Doha before US forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, and he has criticised the crackdown on girls’ education before. But his latest comments represent the first call for a change in policy and a direct appeal to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.

The international community has cited the gender apartheid in Afghanistan as it has denied recognition to the Taliban regime, including in resolutions at the United Nations. Experts and human rights activists monitoring the situation in Afghanistan have said the ban will deeply affect the country’s female population.

The Taliban claims it plans to reopen schools and universities for women but has given no clear details of when or how it plans to do so. Meanwhile, a number of the Taliban’s senior leaders are reported to have sent their children to school overseas.