Taliban minister forced to flee Afghanistan after supporting girls’ education
One of the few officials in Afghanistan’s Taliban government to support reversing the ban on girls’ education appears to have been forced to flee the country.
It was just two weeks ago that Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, said restrictions on the education of girls and women was not in line with Islamic Sharia law.
At a graduation ceremony in Khost province, near the border with Pakistan, he said: ‘We are being unjust to 20million people.
‘During the time of the prophet Muhammad, the doors of knowledge were open for both men and women.
‘There were such remarkable women that if I were to elaborate on their contributions, it would take a considerable amount of time.’
His comments were among the strongest public criticism in recent years by a Taliban official of the school rules, which force girls to leave education at age 12-13.
In response, it’s thought that Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered his arrest in Kandahar and issued him a travel ban.
But before he could be detained, Stanikzai managed to escape to the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan International reported.
Stanikzai confirmed to local media that he had left for Dubai, but said he had left Afghanistan for health reasons.
An entire generation of Afghan women and girls lost their freedom when the Taliban took control of the country in 2021.
Girls have been turned away from school, forced to veil their face and body at all times in public, are not allowed to look at men they aren’t related or married to, or even be seen in their own homes from neighbouring properties.
Even the sound of women singing or simply speaking to and hearing each other has been banned, as part of the Taliban’s ‘vice prevention strategy’.
And female beggars pleading for money or food in the streets say they have been raped, beaten or made to carry out forced labour by Taliban officials.
A UN report in July said the ministry for the ‘propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice’ was contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans, especially women and girls.
In 2022, Unicef worker Sam Mort called the sweeping oppression of women and girls ‘the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world’.
Last month, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor sought arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and Afghanistan’s chief justice, calling their persecution of women and girls a crime against humanity.
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