Taliban will not be allowing girls in Afghanistan to go to college

The Taliban has renegaded on a promise that women would be allowed to go to college.
Right after the United States abandoned Afghanistan and let the Taliban take over again, it was promised that women would be allowed to go to gender-segregated schools.

Now the Taliban has announced that women will no longer be allowed to go to college.
Taliban bars Afghan girls from attending school beyond 6th grade : NPR

Not only that but the Taliban has also closed all women's high schools, saying that they will remain closed until the government comes up with a plan to operate them according to Islamic law.
Taliban orders girls' high schools to remain closed, leaving students in tears | Reuters

Let's remember that 21 years ago, in 2001, the United States (along with several allies) invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power.
News media at the time was celebrating that this would be a huge victory for women's rights and people around the world (well, at least outside of the Muslim World) were shocked at what women there had had to put up with.
But then in late 2021, after a peace agreement had been negotiated with the Taliban to try to bring the conflict to a permanent close and finally bring stability to the country, the Taliban went on the offensive again, and the United States, under the leadership of Biden, decided to abandon the country and allow the Taliban to take over again.

This is not looking like a good day for women's rights.

The United States came to the rescue before and women had 20 years of Western-style rights, but now that is over.


Here's a little history of women's rights in Afghanistan.
In 1921 the first school for girls was opened in the capital city.
In 1924 a law was passed allowing women to choose their own husbands.
In 1959 women no longer had to wear a veil.
In 1964 the Afghanistan government starts to come under international pressure to modernize their government and society.
In 1978 women get even more rights, the government is overthrown a year later by a Soviet-backed Communist Party.
In 1981 Afghanistan became a pawn between Soviet Russia and the United States.
In 1983 Islamic extremists from all different parts of the Muslim World were drawn to Afghanistan to take part in what they saw as a religious war for independence against the Soviets who were trying to suppress religion.
In 1996 the Taliban took power over the country.
In 2001 the United States invaded and removed the Taliban from government.
In 2009 under a new democratically elected government, the controversial Islamic-inspired Shia Personal Status Law was passed, which standardized family relations laws for Shia Muslim women in the country. In some ways this law helped give some women more rights, but took away rights from other women. For example, it specified that Shia women were required to submit to their husband's sexual demands and were expected to have intercourse with their husband every four days. Family issues had previously been decided by local customary law, so the law was considered an improvement for many women outside the capital city.
In 2021 the Taliban took power again, and sent public relations representatives promising that women would be able to do many things they were not allowed to do under the previous Taliban rule (from 1996 to 2001).
Many women feared they would have to go back to wearing the burqa (full face covering).
The Taliban announced women will be required to wear the hijab, but so far will not be required to wear the burqa.

 

I tried to find the answer online but found none. Did the 2020 deal with the Taliban include women's rights?

 

The 2020 deal did not involve the Taliban totally taking over the government.

The basic deal was the United States was to get out of Afghanistan in 14 months and, in exchange, the Taliban agreed not to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists and to stop attacking US service members. The Taliban would start peace talks with the democratically-elected Afghan government and begin to enter into cease-fire negotiations to stop attacks, which it was believed they were using to attempt to gain leverage in negotiations, to gain a peace agreement that would be more beneficial to them.
The deal was intended to try to get the US out of Afghanistan while using that as a bargaining chip to try to get the Taliban to deescalate the ongoing conflict and hopefully come to a peace agreement with the Afghanistan government sooner.
What that might have actually looked like could be the subject of discussion for another thread.

The US could have still gone back into Afghanistan if the process was not going well.

 

I doubt anyone but the Taliban know whether this was a ****-up or a deliberate show of strength meaning they can at any time change their laws and punish at will.
Whatever it is, it is a terrible shame. Clearly it will mean women won't be able to hold meaningful positions in the future and will remain "in their place".

I wonder if they can gather in small groups for self education or get access to the internet. Even old fashioned books would help.
Surely there is a way around this.

 

After what I'm seeing with Ukraines bravery, it's tough to for me now to blame Biden for Afganastans fall.

They surrendered before the first soldier left. We would still be there fighting both the taliban and the afganastans that surrendered. The pull out was as clean as it ever was going to be and the people " left behind" wanted to stay.

Why did they not resist like Ukraine?
I guess just think of it like ye ol 1950s America...conservatives didn't want woman educated either, and no one complained.

Let's welcome the female refugees I guess.

 

Conservatives have always oppressed women first and foremost. It gets the males to support what turns out to be their own repression very shortly

It saddens me to see this happening. I was hoping we might actually be seeing a "new" Taliban, one that might actually follow the real tenets of Islam, but it seems to be apparent that religious nationalism will turn out to be a tool of tyranny yet again.

 

Sadly, this was going to be the end result of a U.S. withdrawal no matter who was president here or how the withdrawal was handled. The only real recourse for people who live in repressive regimes like that are to leave. There's just too many people in countries like that who support things like the Taliban. You'll never get rid of them when they enjoy that kind of support. We beat them back pretty good over the years under Democratic and Republican administrations but they all just crawled back out of the cracks in the ground like the cockroaches they are regardless. That was always going to happen.

 

Keep in mind that in 2001 the Taliban banned the internet due to obscene images.

If they do decide to allow the internet, it could be likely that they might try to somehow block all pictures. Or where people can only access it in a public place with religious authorities looking on. (Women would of course have to have their own separate public place to do this, which is not even clear that would happen. You do have to remember in many conservative Muslim societies, women are seen as being like emotional children, with the status of minors, so they would likely not even go to the trouble of creating a separate public place for women to be able to use the internet)

It's not merely just pornography or nudity that is seen as obscene but also pictures of women just showing their faces (especially if not at least covering their head with a hijab).

Or they might make their own separate version of the internet, and only allow access to certain pre-approved sites, which would mostly be in other Muslim countries.

 

That is not necessarily true, but that would probably be the topic for a different conversation.

I personally do not know for sure whether it could have been possible to truly permanently defeat the Taliban for good, or what realistic chance there was that the Taliban may have been able to come to some compromise and been willing to peacefully coexist with the Afghan government. Islamic fundamentalist religion isn't exactly known for being very compatible with democracy.

Kind of sad if certain societies simply have no hope, isn't it? (Maybe you think just moving them to somewhere else will magically solve the problem)

 

Oh, by the way, female genital mutilation is going on in Afghanistan. It's not very popular overall in the country, but is happening in provinces near the Pakistani border.
It's not the type of thing women in this culture would talk about openly so it's hard to gage exactly how prevalent it really is. Many girls and even women may not even be aware it happened to them.

There was one small study conducted in Iran that showed a high prevalence of FGM among refugee women who had come from Afghanistan.

 

Who on earth trusted the Taliban about anything? Why is anyone surprised?

 

Exactly. We gave the Afghan people plenty of time to get their s*it together and, in the end, they just reverted back to the 1400s tribal mentality.
I feel sorry for the women their but they also are part of the problem. What have they been doing for the last 20 years?

 

Moving the whole society would not work, but for those who live within it who don't want that kind of system but are powerless to change it, moving is the only real option. It would require a shift in mindset for a large portion of their society for changes to actually happen. That's the only real way to get rid of the Taliban, because they exist as more than just a group of people, they exist as an idea too. That doesn't seem likely in Afghanistan right now.

 

I have that information somewhere on my other computer. IIRC, the literacy rate among females did improve and there were some concerns that many of the professional women (ie. doctors, accountants, etc.) would be removed once our military closed out there. It might take me a minute to find it but I'll let you know.

 

Not surprising .. but, why would we be .. Taliban just following the lead of Brother El Saud .. that bastion of liberty and freedom we should all emulate.

 

So we got your thoughts on Kaz. Now, what about the Taliban and its stand on women's rights?

 

They are the same as those in the US who oppose women's rights.

 

Aren't they closing all girls schools in their country?

 

Blame America when everything else fails

What are you doing about it?

 

Sad to see all our efforts, blood and treasure expended there go to waste and our retreat seen to the world that we are weak.

If there is a worse geopolitical optic than thousands of civilian Allies running after escape planes and some of them falling from the sky in perfect synchronicity to the Americans falling from the sky on 9/11, I don’t know what that is.

But we have a President that is a “we shall retreat at any cost” President, that is now displaying he is also a “we will never use our troops directly no matter what” President, and we can thank god that Ukraine is kicking ass or else we’d be looking at a free for all all over the world.

 

I only wanted to dispute one small but important fact: the US did not invade Afghanistan because of the Taliban or their human rights abuses. We invaded because Bin Ladin orchestrated and attack (9/11) on the US, and he was hiding out in Afghanistan, then the Taliban gave him cover, so we then considered them the enemy. Just wanted to clear that up, as the human rights aspect was at least a secondary reason. It might have been a reason why we stayed after Bin Ladin was killed.
It's awful how some people behave here and around the globe. Someday religions will be obsolete and it will get rid of most of the persecution.

 

No it won't. Persecution comes from power. In the absence of religious power, political or corporate, power will take it's place. There will always be someone trying to control the thoughts and actions of others. Freedom of speech is the one thing that can quell some of that and right now, the left wants to take that away in the name of safety. If the right would stay out of the bedroom and the left would stay out of your pocketbook, the world would be a better place.

 

This is expected when cave men are in control. As far as wearing coverings, even female dogs have to be covered from head to paw. (Its called a Barka!)

 

Lets narrow it down and just blame the Person that pulled the plug "BYDUMB DID THAT"

 

Good point! Maybe I was being optimistic. I don't know any one source more guilty of persecution than religion, though. Maybe it really translates to power, though.
See what happens! I included an afterthought and got busted for it! LOL