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KABUL: Male students trickled back to their classes Monday after Afghan universities reopened following a winter break but women remain barred by Taliban authorities.
The university ban is one of several restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 and has sparked global outrage – including across the Muslim world.
The Taliban government imposed the ban after accusing women students of ignoring a strict dress code and a requirement to be accompanied by a male relative to and from campus.
Most universities had already introduced gender-segregated entrances and classrooms, as well as allowing women to be taught only by female professors or old men.
“It’s painful to see that thousands of girls are deprived of education today,” Mohammad Haseeb Habibzadah, a student of computer science at Herat university, told AFP.
“We are trying to address this issue by talking to lecturers and other students so that there can be a way where boys and girls could study and progress together.”
Ejatullah Nejati, an engineering student at Kabul University, Afghanistan’s largest, said it was a fundamental right of women to study.
“Even if they attend classes on separate days, it’s not a problem. They have a right to education and that right should be given to them,” Nejati said as he entered the university campus.
Several Taliban officials say the ban on women’s education is temporary but, despite promises, they have failed to reopen secondary schools for girls, which have been closed for more than a year.
They have wheeled out a litany of excuses for the closure, from a lack of funds to the time needed to remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.
The reality, according to some Taliban officials, is that the ultra-conservative clerics advising Afghanistan’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada are deeply sceptical of modern education for women.
Taliban authorities have effectively squeezed women out of public life since retaking power.
