Kabul/Hyderabad: The Taliban have reopened public universities for women students on February 2, in six Afghanistan provinces. Since their takeover in mid-August, The Taliban have imposed several restrictions, many of them on women.
The international community is closely watching the developments in Afghanistan to see whether the Taliban will impose the same harsh measures as during their 1990s rule of Afghanistan, including banning girls from education and women from the workplace and public life.
Since the Taliban seized power in August, women have been banned from many jobs outside the health and teaching sector, and girls have not been able to go to school after grade six. They also demand women to wear headscarves. However burqa, the head-to-toe covering that was compulsory under their previous rule, has not been imposed.
According to ABC News, the Taliban-run culture and information ministry informed on Wednesday that public universities in the provinces of Nangarhar and Kandahar were now open for women in what it described as a staggered process expected to see all students — men and women — eventually return to university.
The Taliban spokesman for the ministry of higher education, Ahmad Taqqi, further revealed that public universities also reopened Wednesday for women in four more provinces — Helmand, Farah, Nimroz, and Laghman.
However, gender-segregated system will be followed under Taliban, as men will attend classes in the morning and women in the afternoon.
It must be recalled that the Taliban have come under heavy fire since their takeover, for denying girls and women education. Reopening of public universities being their first concession, the Taliban have promised that all girls will be back in school by the end of March at the start of the Afghan new year.
