Hold Taliban to task for breaking promise to girls

Each year, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a nongovernmental organization, publishes the World Happiness Report, which ranks various countries by their sense of well-being, based on Gallup World Poll data. Afghanistan ranked last in the new edition, published March 18, all too unsurprisingly. Beset by poverty, government human rights violations and continued terrorist attacks, the Afghan people have had little to feel good about since August, when the United States withdrew its remaining troops amid violent chaos, the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed and the Islamist Taliban movement seized power.

Now comes word of yet another crushing disappointment: The Taliban did not permit girls to return to secondary school Wednesday as it had been publicly promising to do as recently as Monday. Many girls arrived for classes, only to be sent home. At one school in western Kabul, Taliban members fired their guns in the air to disperse girls who had gathered outside the gates. Taliban officials attributed the sudden reversal to the lack of a religiously acceptable uniform for girls and a shortage of females available to teach gender-segregated classes. More likely, the broken promise reflects the continuing ascendancy of religious hard-liners in the Taliban, who have never really accepted the idea of educating girls beyond the sixth grade. Indeed, there have been signs of persistent discriminatory policy for weeks, such as a recent order, from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice requiring the Health Ministry to segregate male and female employees. Almost 80 women journalists have been put out of work, according to Reporters Without Borders. Human Rights Watch called those firings part of the Taliban’s “far-reaching censorship and violence against Afghan media” outside of Kabul, the capital. Despite the crackdown on independent media, credible reports have emerged of summary executions of suspected anti-Taliban insurgents in the Panjshir Valley.

The Taliban’s latest betrayal of Afghan girls is especially cruel because the regime knew the international community was watching girls’ access to schools as it considered financial support and, eventually, diplomatic recognition. With the promised reopening of schools to girls on the way, aid sources had been showing flexibility: Just three weeks ago, the World Bank released $1 billion from a frozen trust fund,

$600 million of which, channeled through the United Nations and nongovernment organizations, would provide short-term support for health, education and other basic services. The U.N. Security Council has just reauthorized the U.N. mission in Afghanistan to help coordinate aid and maintain contacts between Afghanistan and the rest of the world.

The United States has come under criticism for withholding Afghanistan’s frozen assets for fear that they would end up underwriting a repressive regime rather than helping the Afghan people. Unfortunately, the Taliban’s broken promise suggests that the Biden administration is right to be skeptical of the de facto Kabul regime’s intentions. Unless reversed immediately, the decision to deny girls secondary education will confirm that those who rule Afghanistan place a higher value on ideological purity than human needs — or human rights.