CLOSURE: The Taliban have banned women from universities

The Taliban have announced the CLOSURE of universities for women in Afghanistan, according to a letter by the Taliban’s higher education minister.

The letter states that all universities will remain closed for women until further notice.

The Taliban have banned women from universities. 

This is a shameful decision that violates the right to education for women and girls in Afghanistan. The Taliban are making it clear every day that they don’t respect the fundamental rights of Afghans, especially women.

Pakistan’s special forces have raided a counterterrorism centre in a remote northwestern district, killing all of the 33 Pakistani Taliban fighters who earlier this week overpowered guards at the facility, seized arms and taken hostages, officials said.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters had killed two hostages before the rescue operation on Tuesday, according to the country’s defence minister.

But it was not immediately clear how many officers had been held by the hostage-takers at the centre in Bannu, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, since the brazen takeover on Sunday.

More than 30 members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group — separate from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar hardline Islamist ideology — overpowered their jailers on Sunday and snatched weapons.

The men, held on suspicion of terrorism, have demanded safe passage to Afghanistan in return for releasing at least eight police officers and military intelligence officials, said Muhammad Ali Saif, a spokesman for the provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government.

“We fear that the Taliban could enter any school in the suburbs and take the students hostage. We are not taking any risks and that’s why we decided to close the schools for today,” said a senior government official in the district who asked not to be named.

The police station is within a cantonment area in Bannu, in Pakistan’s formerly self-governed tribal areas and near the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have asked the government in Kabul to help with the release of the hostages, the senior government official told AFP.

The TTP said its members were behind the incident and demanded authorities provide them safe passage to border areas.

Overnight on Monday, at least 50 Pakistan Taliban militants stormed another police station in Wana — also close to the Afghan border and some 200 kilometres south of Bannu — according to local government and senior police officials, both of whom asked not to be named.

The group locked up police officers and seized weapons before border force troops moved in to take back control.

The TTP claimed responsibility, saying two police officers were killed.

Authorities have not officially acknowledged the incident.

The TTP emerged in 2007 and carried out a horrific wave of violence in Pakistan that was largely crushed after a military operation beginning in 2014.

However, attacks are on the rise again since the Afghan Taliban seized control of Kabul last year, with most targeting security forces.

A shaky months-long ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad ended last month.

Three months ago thousands of girls and women sat university entrance exams across Afghanistan.

But sweeping restrictions were imposed on the subjects they could study, with veterinary science, engineering, economics and agriculture off limits and journalism severely restricted.

After the Taliban takeover last year, universities introduced gender segregated classrooms and entrances.

Female students could only be taught by women professors or old men.

Responding to the latest ban, a female university student told the BBC she thought the Taliban were scared of women and their power.

“They destroyed the only bridge that could connect me with my future,” she said.

“How can I react? I believed that I could study and change my future or bring the light to my life but they destroyed it.”

Afghanistan’s education sector was badly affected after the Taliban takeover and there has been an exodus of trained academics after the withdrawal of US-led forces last year.

Another woman spoke about “too many difficulties” just trying to continue her education after the Taliban takeover.

She told the BBC: “We fought with our brothers, with our fathers, with society and even with the government.

“We went through a hard situation just to be able to continue our education.

“At that time at least I was happy that I could graduate from university and achieve my dreams. But, now how can I convince myself?”

Afghanistan’s economy has been largely dependent on foreign aid in recent decades, but aid agencies have partly – and in some cases fully – withdrawn support to the education sector after the Taliban refused to allow girls into secondary schools.

Many of the teaching staff who remain go unpaid for months.

The latest measures are likely to cause further concerns in the international community.

The US and other Western countries have made improvements to female education in Afghanistan a prior condition for the formal recognition of the Taliban government.