Taliban replaces women’s ministry with department of vice and virtue
THE Taliban’s ‘moral police’ have moved into the Women’s Affairs Ministry building in the Afghanistan capital Kabul. On Friday, former female employees were locked out and a sign reading ‘Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’ was hung outside.
The move came as Taliban leaders – who swept back into power last month after the chaotic withdrawal of Western troops – excluded girls from secondary schools.
Nororya Nizhat, a former Education Ministry spokeswoman, said: ‘This is a setback in the education of Afghan women and girls. This reminds everyone of what the Taliban did in the 1990s. We ended up with a generation of illiterate and non-educated women.’
The hardline Islamists were last in power from 1996 to 2001, when girls were not allowed to attend school and women were banned from work and education.
During that period the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known as the moral police, enforced its interpretation of sharia law, including a strict dress code and public executions and floggings.
Shortly after regaining power, the Taliban said the rights of women would be respected ‘within the framework of Islamic law’. On
Friday they ordered the return of boys and male teachers to the classroom for yesterday, but made no mention of girls or female staff.
One schoolgirl told the BBC: ‘Everything looks very dark. Every day I wake up and ask myself, “Why am I alive?” Should I stay at home and wait for someone to knock on the door and ask me to marry him? Is this the purpose of being a woman?’
Secondary schools in Afghanistan teach students aged 13 to 18 and most are already segregated by sex, making it easy to close down institutions for girls.
Mabouba Suraj, who heads the Afghan Women’s Network, said that she was astounded by the flurry of orders by the Taliban government restricting women and girls.
‘It is becoming really, really troublesome. Is this the stage where the girls are going to be forgotten?’ Ms Suraj said. ‘I know the Taliban don’t believe in giving explanations, but explanations are very important.’
Statements from the Taliban leadership often reflect a willingness to engage with the world, open public spaces to women and girls and protect Afghanistan’s minorities, but orders to its rank and file on the ground are contradictory, and restrictions, particularly on women, have been implemented.
Ms Suraj speculated that contradictory statements perhaps reflect divisions within the Taliban as they seek to consolidate power, with the more pragmatic losing out to hardliners, at least for now.
‘A knock at the door and then I’ll be married’