WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - TALIBAN MAY END
OPPOSITION TO
EDUCATION FOR GIRLS - MANY
UNCERTAINTIES
Under the Taliban regime women
were not allowed
to be educated and were forced
to wear the burka.
The
Taliban are ready to drop their ban on schooling girls in
Farooq Wardak told the
The Taliban - who are fighting the
Afghan women were not allowed to work or get an education under the Taliban regime overthrown in 2001.
Making deals
Mr Wardak made his comments during the
Education World Forum in
He told the TES: "What I am hearing at the very upper policy level of the Taliban is that they are no more opposing education and also girls' education.
"I hope, Inshallah (God willing), soon there will be a peaceful negotiation, a meaningful negotiation with our own opposition and that will not compromise at all the basic human rights and basic principles which have been guiding us to provide quality and balanced education to our people," the minister added.
Last October, Afghan President Hamid
Karzai confirmed unofficial talks with Taliban leaders were under way in an
attempt to end the bloody insurgency that has wrecked the troubled country for
more close to a decade.
Mr Wardak's words suggest the
negotiations have gone beyond issues like the release of prisoners to touch on
areas of government policy, correspondents say.
However, the education minister admitted
historical opposition to schooling extended beyond the Taliban to the
"deepest pockets" of Afghan society.
"That is the reason that in many
provinces of
"During the Taliban era the
percentage of girls of the one million students that we had was 0%. The
percentage of female teachers was 0%. Today 38% of our students and 30% of our
teachers are female."
Female MPs greeted with disbelief the
Taliban's supposed softening of stance on schooling for girls.
Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament
from the central-eastern Afghan
"I don't believe in this because in
Wardak we have six Pashtun-dominated districts and all the girls' schools are
closed and have never been open. There are only schools open in two
Hazara-dominated districts."
Marman Gulhar, MP for the north-eastern
"This is not true and it will never
happen," she told the BBC. "The Taliban will never be ready for that
[girls' education].
"In fact they are fighting against
that. The girls' schools are closed and still are closed."
_________________________________________________
The apparent relaxation of the Taliban's policy towards education doesn't seem to be part of a formal deal with the Afghan government.
Hundreds of schools, for boys and girls, have been attacked and destroyed since the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.
But in recent years public pressure has partially forced the Taliban, at least at local level, to change their minds about education.
The Taliban did not publicly oppose female education when they were in power in the 1990s.
Their position was they did not have the resources to establish separate female educational institutions with all female staff.
The Taliban now say they don't oppose education, but are against any use of the educational sector as a political and ideological tool against them.
The Taliban appears to have reconsidered many of their views since they were ousted, including acceptance of video technologies they once considered un-Islamic.
The Taliban also once banned opium poppy cultivation, but now farmers grow it in areas under the militants' control.
Across
the country agreements have been struck at a local level between militants and
village elders to allow girls and female teachers to return to schools, the
BBC's Quentin Sommerville in
________________________________________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/21/taliban-afghan-government-girls-education
AFGHANISTAN - WHO BENEFITS FROM
TALIBAN REVISIONISM?
The Afghan government is trying to whitewash the
Taliban's image by claiming it no longer opposes education for girls
Farooq Wardak, the Afghan education
minister and a key ally of President Hamid Karzai, claims that the Taliban
leadership no longer opposes
education for girls. The question is not whether this claim is true –
teachers and students who continue to be terrorised by Taliban attacks would
find it laughable – but why a senior Afghan official would engage in such
misinformation.
The education
ministry's own statistics show that 20 schools were bombed or burned down between
March and October 2010. At least 126 students and teachers were killed in the
same period – an increase from the previous year. It's hard to know how many of
these attacks were carried out by the Taliban, but the evidence in many cases
points in their direction.
Attacks are often
preceded by a threatening "night letter" like this one, sent last
year to a school in Kunduz, in the north:
"You were
already informed by us to close the school and not mislead the pure and
innocent girls under this non-Muslim government … This is the last warning to
close the school immediately ... If you remain in the province, remember that
you along with your family will be eliminated. Just wait for your death."
In another case, a
female teacher received a letter that said:
"We Taliban warn
you to stop working, otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in
such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This will
be a good lesson for those women like you who are working."
Another teacher quit
after receiving a letter with a Taliban insignia in October 2009:
"We warn you to
leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible, otherwise we will cut the
heads off your children and we shall set fire to your daughter."
When I showed some of these letters to Wardak last July, he passed his eyes
over them briefly, then cast them aside, saying: "If we had time I could
explain to you how I know that this is the handwriting of Pakistanis, not
Afghans." He went on to question whether Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, really exists. This was a
startling lesson in revisionism about the Taliban.
Today, just as when
the Taliban were in power pre-9/11, some rural communities are able to
negotiate with them to stop attacks on education. Afghan parents want their
children educated, including their daughters, and fight for it, even when it
puts them at risk. But the Taliban usually draws the line at educating girls
over about age 10, when puberty and demands to segregate the sexes take
precedence. And not all attacks are about gender. Many schools and teachers are
attacked as visible agents of the government in small rural communities or as
symbols of western influence and teaching.
When in power the Taliban claimed that girls were being denied education
only because of scant resources, a claim that Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the
Taliban's former ambassador to
Wardak plays down
Taliban attacks on women and girls because he has become a leading government
proponent of the need for reconciliation with the Taliban. It suits his agenda
to whitewash continuing Taliban crimes. And, like many Afghan politicians, he
prefers the conspiracy claims – that the Taliban are an entirely Pakistani
creation, rather than confronting the messy reality of a home-grown movement
that is as much a product of Afghan reality as of
There is a risk that
some politicians in the
While most women in
Instead of trying to
soften the image of a group synonymous with the oppression of women and girls,
the education minister should focus on increasing opportunities for their
schooling, and on protecting girls' education from attack. Attacking schools is
a war crime and should never be glossed over. Those who threaten, bomb and burn
down schools should instead be held to account.