The Taliban closes Afghan girls' schools hours after reopening
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Loading... - Mason Owen
- 23 Mar 2022
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The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has announced that girls’ high schools will be closed, hours after they reopened for the first time in nearly seven months.
The backtracking by the Taliban means female students above the sixth grade will not be able to attend school.
A Ministry of Education notice said on Wednesday that schools for girls would be closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture, according to Bakhtar News Agency, a government news agency.
“We inform all girls high schools and those schools that are having female students above class six that they are off until the next order,” said the notice.
“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.”
The education ministry acknowledged authorities faced a shortage of teachers – with many among the tens of thousands of people who fled the country as the Taliban swept to power after the West-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani collapsed.
“We need thousands of teachers and to solve this problem we are trying to hire new teachers on a temporary basis,” the spokesman said.
The Ministry of Education had announced last week that schools for all students, including girls, would open around the country on Wednesday after months of restrictions on education for high school-aged girls.
On Tuesday evening a ministry spokesman released a video congratulating all students on their return to class.
An AFP team was filming at Zarghona High School in the capital, Kabul, when a teacher entered and said the class was over. Read More…
