A senior Taliban official has urged the group’s leader to lift education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying they have no excuse, in a rare public rebuke of government policy.
Sher Abbas Stanikzai, political assistant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the remarks on Saturday in a speech in the southeastern province of Khost.
He told a ceremony at a religious school that there was no reason to deny education to women and girls, “just as there was no justification in the past and there should be no not be there at all.”
The government prohibited girls from continuing their studies after the sixth grade. Last September, it was reported that authorities had also stopped medical training and courses for women.
In Afghanistan, women and girls can only be treated by female doctors and health professionals. Authorities have not yet confirmed the ban on medical training.
“We once again call on leaders to open the doors to education,” Stanikzai said in a video shared on his official account on the social platform X. “We are committing injustice against 20 million people out of a population of 40 million , depriving them of all their rights. This is not a matter of Islamic law, but of our personal choice or our nature.
Stanikzai was once the leader of the Taliban team in talks that led to the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.
It’s not the first time he said women and girls deserve to have an education. He made similar remarks in September 2022, a year after schools closed for girls and months and before the introduction of a university ban.
But these latest comments mark his first call for a policy change and a direct appeal to the Taliban leader. Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst with Crisis Group’s South Asia program, said Stanikzai had periodically made statements calling girls’ education the right of all Afghan women.
“However, this latest statement appears to go further in that he publicly calls for a policy change and questions the legitimacy of the current approach,” Bahiss said.
In the Pakistani capital Islamabad earlier this month, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders to challenge the Taliban on the education of women and girls.
She spoke at a conference organized by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Muslim World League.
The UN declared recognition almost impossible while ban on education and employment of women remain in place and women cannot go out in public without a male guardian.
No country recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, but countries like Russia established relationships with them.
India is also developing relations with the Afghan authorities.
In Dubai earlier this month, a meeting between India’s top diplomat, Vikram Mistri, and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi showed their deep cooperation.
