“The Taliban have made fundamental changes to the country’s school and university curricula over the past three years,” Afghan human rights organization Rawadari reported. The organization, which was founded by the former head of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission Shahrzad Akbar, documents human rights violations in the country.
The Islamist Taliban rulers have banned girls from attending school beyond sixth grade and women from going to university. They have also removed all topics related to human rights and women’s rights from school and university curricula, saying issues related to equality, liberty, elections and democracy contradict Taliban ideology.
They are not stopping there. Inclusive and non-discriminatory educational approaches, which are particularly important in Afghanistan due to its many ethnic and religious minorities, are also being scrapped.
A Taliban takeover of classrooms and lecture halls
“Teaching in different mother tongues and covering subjects relating to religion, culture and history has been severely restricted for students from these minorities,” Rawadari said. “Access to literacy and vocational training programs has also been severely restricted for girls with disabilities.”
“The Taliban have removed a lot of content from school textbooks,” said Sardar Mohammad Rahimi, who served as Afghanistan’s deputy minister of education until the Taliban took over in August 2021.
“The Taliban do not yet have the capacity to create new content,” Rahimi, who now lives in French exile and works as a visiting professor at INALCO University in Paris, told DW. “They lack both the experts and the technical means to completely redesign and publish curricula. It would take them around five years to fundamentally transform the education system.”
Many Afghan intellectuals and academics have left the country since the Taliban takeover. The Islamist rulers have also dismissed numerous lecturers and professors from schools and universities over the last three years. They have mainly been replaced by religious school graduates who follow the Taliban’s ideology.
“The Taliban are currently focusing on expanding their religious schools, the madrassas; this is a dangerous development,” Rahimi said.
Rejection of women’s and human rights
Madrassas, or religious schools, exist in many Islamic countries. In Afghanistan, these schools are controlled by the Taliban. Their aim is to promote a strict interpretation of Islam and ensure theirs is the view of Islam passed to the next generation.
The Taliban follow an extremely conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam, which calls for the application of Sharia, or Islamic law, in all areas of life. It also propagates a rigid social order. The Taliban reject women’s rights, human rights and regard the Western world as a harmful influence on Islamic society. Since coming back to power in 2021, the Taliban have reversed progress made over the last two decades regarding Afghan women’s rights.
Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International often report how Afghan women and girls are subjected to brutal punishments for allegedly “un-Islamic behavior.” Punishments include imprisonment, suffering sexual violence while in custody and public floggings. In addition, many girls who are no longer allowed to go to school are forced into marriage.
‘A hell of structural oppression and systematic violence’
“The Taliban have turned the country into a hell of structural oppression and systematic violence against Afghan women and girls,” Maryam Marof Arwin told DW. The Afghan women’s and human rights activist has urgently warned of the consequences of criminalizing women, referring to Taliban laws imposing far-reaching restrictions on women and girls.
These laws not only oblige women to cover their faces and bodies in public but also prohibit them from raising their voices outside the home. Young men monitor women and act as moral police to enforce the rules.
“We urgently need a coordinated plan for online education for all Afghanistan school children,” Rahimi said. “There are numerous foreign-led projects that currently support girls, in particular, who have no access to secondary schools, with teaching materials. If these projects were better coordinated, they could make a significant contribution to the education of all Afghanistan children.”
This article was translated from German.
