Travel bans over stance on education

NEW YORK: The United Nations on Monday banned two Taliban officials from travelling abroad in response to the harsh restrictions the hardline Islamists have imposed on Afghan women, diplomats told AFP.

Travel exemptions permitting 15 Taliban officials to go abroad for talks and negotiations were set to expire on Monday.

For 13 officials the travel exemptions were extended for at least two months, but they were scrapped for two education officials in response to the Taliban’s decision to ban secondary girls’ education.

According to a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, the officials now banned from traveling are Said Ahmad Shaidkhel, the deputy education minister, and Abdul Baqi Basir Awal Shah — also known as Abdul Baqi Haqqani — the minister of higher education.

Since seizing power in August, the Taliban have rolled back marginal gains made by Afghan women during the past two decades, limiting their access to education, government jobs and freedom of movement.

In March, supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered secondary schools for girls to shut, just hours after they reopened for the first time since the Taliban returned to power.

The decree, which stops hundreds of thousands of teenage girls from attending schools, was met with international outrage.

A top Taliban education official criticised the latest UN decision as “superficial and unjust”. “Such decisions will only make the situation more critical,” deputy minister of higher education Lutfullah Khairkhwa told AFP.

Under the agreement, the exemption will automatically be extended for 13 Taliban leaders in the third month “unless objected by any Council member,” a diplomatic source said.