A senior Taliban minister, who publicly condemned the group's ban on education of girls and women, has reportedly fled Afghanistan amid fears of arrest. Sher Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban's political deputy at the foreign ministry, had called on other leaders to open schools for girls and women in January and said the edict forbidding them from schools was not in line with Sharia law as the hardline rulers claimed. "There is no excuse for this - not now and not in the future," Mr Stanikzai said at a graduation ceremony in Khost province. "We are being unjust to 20 million people." (referring to Afghanistan's female population) For more than three years, the Taliban have banned female education, preventing girls and women from attending school beyond the sixth grade. Not long after the speech, the Taliban's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada reportedly ordered Mr Stanikzai's arrest and issued a travel ban against him, prohibiting him from stepping back in Afghanistan. But he had left for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates before he could have been held. Taliban minister who publicly opposed girls’ education ban 'flees' Afghanistan, Arpan Rai, The Independent, Feb 4, 2025 related thread: Taliban will not be allowing girls in Afghanistan to go to college (in 'Current Events', March 24, 2022)
I admire his courage. There is a high degree of probability that the Taliban will go all out to kill him no matter where he goes. The Taliban is destroying itself through their primitive behavior.
