Educational Backsliding in Afghanistan: Repressive Policy for Girl’s Schooling under the Taliban

Afghanistan’s socio-political climate has observed a major shift under Taliban rule in the past year, raising concerns for Afghan women’s access to education. The Taliban first took control of the country in 1996, prompting an American-led intervention in 2001 and the subsequent ousting of leader Mullah Mohammed Omar from Afghanistan. After two decades of international and domestic efforts to counter the civil and political losses faced by women under its regime, the Taliban once again seized Kabul and resumed power on August 15, 2021. Though Taliban rule affects all aspects of Afghan citizens’ everyday life, the country’s education system has experienced the greatest transformations, especially in terms of girls’ access to schooling. In accordance with Islamic fundamentalism, the Taliban has embraced an interpretation of Islam that does not reflect the beliefs of the vast majority of Muslims. The group’s educational policy is a direct reflection of their fundamentalist understanding of Islam and Sharia Law. 

The Taliban’s original leadership from 1996 to 2001 implemented highly restrictive policies regarding female schooling, effectively banning women’s access to education. Prior to the militant group’s seizure of Kabul in 1996, girls made up over half of all students. However, upon its capture of Kandahar in 1994, the Taliban immediately closed girls’ educational institutions and enacted a ban on women attending school. Women and girls who were caught teaching, attempting to attend school, or even carrying books, were reported to have been lashed by Taliban authorities. These restrictions were met with significant opposition from notable human rights organizations, like UNICEF, as well as internally from Afghans who argued that education for women is accepted under the major schools of doctrine for Islamic Law. The Taliban’s deputy head of the Vice and Virtue Ministry, Maulvi Qalamuddin, claimed that the regime would “provide education for [girls and women] eventually,” blaming the ban on disagreements within the Taliban regarding school curriculums. The Islamist group’s only modification to their policy on women’s education came in 1996, when the regime declared that Afghan girls may be permitted to study the Quran in schools up until the age of eight. No further progress on the matter was made, and by 2000, 90 percent of girls were no longer attending school. Under the Taliban’s repressive regime, millions of girls and women lost the right to pursue an education.

In 2001, a US-led invasion toppled the Islamist regime and re-prioritized girls’ access to education, igniting a spark of hope for women and girls throughout the nation. The international community invested approximately $1.9 billion into Afghanistan’s education sector, and girls’ school attendance rose rapidly. By 2018, 83% of girls were enrolled in school, with nearly 40 percent of women pursuing secondary education. In 2002, UNICEF partnered with the reinstated Afghan government to launch the Back to School campaign, leading efforts to build new schools across the country and promote girls’ enrollment. Women’s involvement in higher education, too, soared, with the number of women taking the country’s university entrance exam reaching an all time high of 78,000 in 2013. Afghanistan’s leading university, Kabul University, even launched a master’s degree in Gender and Women’s studies in 2015. 

In February 2020, US President Donald Trump negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. Despite protest from the Afghan government, President Trump agreed to free jailed Taliban soldiers and remove US troops by May 1, 2021, on the basis that the Taliban would take action against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that might threaten the United States and its allies. American troops began to withdraw from the country and imprisoned Taliban soldiers were gradually let out of jail. Upon taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden extended the withdrawal date to August 31, 2021, despite calls to scrap withdrawal plans altogether in light of the Taliban’s continued attacks on Afghan government forces as well as a record number of attacks on civilians. After a month of seizing territory throughout the country, the Taliban captured Kabul on August 15, marking their official return to power in Afghanistan.

Shortly thereafter, Taliban Minister of Education, Maulvi Noorullah Munir, announced that both boys and girls beyond grade six would be suspended from attending school until March 23 2022 so that the de facto government could revise school curriculums to remove math and science and emphasize Sharia Law. Like their predecessors, the current regime claimed they would eventually allow for women’s education, as long as it is in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law. 

Fearing a reversal of the progress made through billions of dollars of humanitarian aid efforts in the country, the international community responded immediately: a number of NGOs and governments, including the World Bank and the United States, promised funding for education if the Taliban reopened schools for girls. However, on the morning of March 23, 2022, the Taliban announced that schools would remain closed to girls, citing an internal disagreement concerning girls' school uniforms. 

Currently, only a few girls’ schools remain open in Afghanistan, primarily in the country’s northern regions, where women have historically been granted more active roles in society than in other areas. Girls at these schools observe strict dress codes and are taught by female teachers. Ultimately, the existence and operation of these schools demonstrate internal disagreement and inconsistency in the Taliban’s education policy. 

Over the past year, the Taliaban has cracked down even harder on higher education. Maulvi Noorullah Munir has expressed the Taliban’s stance on the subject quite plainly: “No Ph.D. degree, master’s degree is valuable today… you see that the mullahs and Taliban that are in power have no Ph.D., M.A., or even a high school degree, but are the greatest of all.” The Taliban’s Minister of Higher Education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, has stated that the developments made by international investment in Afghanistan’s higher education over the past 20 years are useless to the country and that “modern studies” are less valuable than religious studies taught at Madrasas (traditional Islamic religious schools which, in Afghanistan, the Taliban have often used as a tool to spread their Islamic fundamentalist ideology). Haqqani noted that some private universities will be allowed to continue operations on the condition that they abide with the Taliban’s anti-coeducation stance: women must be taught by female lecturers and attend classes with men only if separated by a divider or via video call.

Despite limited data and access regarding the Taliban’s current educational policy, unsettling parallels to the 1996-2001 regime are nonetheless obvious. In addition to the Taliban’s failure to fulfill their assurances that women will eventually return to the classrooms, the current de facto government has also failed to make good on their promise regarding girls’ return to school due to alleged internal disagreements, leading to major setbacks in progress for the pursuit of women’s education in Afghanistan. Not only is the country at risk of backpedaling on two decades’ worth of development, but with the loss of education, Afghani women are once again at risk of exclusion from public and professional spheres following an era in which they gained unprecedented mobility in government and higher education.

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