‘Why Can’t We Study?’ - Afghan Girls Still Barred From School

All primary students can return to school in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have barred secondary schoolgirls from lessons until security and segregation requirements are met - AFP
All primary students can return to school in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have barred secondary schoolgirls from lessons until security and segregation requirements are met - AFP
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‘Why Can’t We Study?’ - Afghan Girls Still Barred From School

All primary students can return to school in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have barred secondary schoolgirls from lessons until security and segregation requirements are met - AFP
All primary students can return to school in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have barred secondary schoolgirls from lessons until security and segregation requirements are met - AFP

Afghan teenager Amena saw dozens of classmates killed when her girls' school was targeted by an ISIS bomb attack in May, but she was determined to continue her education.

Now, like most secondary school girls in the country, she is banned from lessons altogether after the Taliban's hardline government excluded them from returning to class one month ago.

"I wanted to study, see my friends and have a bright future, but now I am not allowed," 16-year-old Amena told AFP at her home in western Kabul.

"This situation makes me feel awful. Since the Taliban arrived, I am very sad and angry."

On September 18, Taliban ordered male teachers and boys aged 13 and over back to secondary schools, picking up an academic year already cut short by violence and the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, there was no mention of women teachers or girl pupils.

The Taliban later said older girls can return to secondary schools, which were already mostly split by gender, but only once security and stricter segregation under their interpretation of Islamic law could be ensured.

Reports have emerged of girls going back to a few high schools -- such as in Kunduz province where the Taliban promoted the return with a stage-managed rally.

The de facto Taliban education minister told the UN children's body that a framework to allow all girls to go to secondary school will be announced soon, a senior UNICEF executive said Friday.

But for now, the vast majority are barred from lessons across the country of about 39 million people, including in the capital Kabul.

Primary schools, meanwhile, have reopened for all children and women can go to private universities, though with tough restrictions on their clothes and movement.

Amena lives just a short walk from her Sayed Al-Shuhada High School, where 85 people -- mainly young girls -- perished in the May bomb attack.

"Innocent girls were killed," Amena said, her eyes welling up.

"I saw with my own eyes the dying and wounded girls.

"However, I still wanted to go to school again."

Amena would be in Grade 10 studying her favorite subjects such as biology, but instead is stuck inside with a handful of books doing "nothing special".

The teenager said she dreamt of becoming a journalist, but now has "no hope in Afghanistan".

Her siblings help her at home, and occasionally she gets lessons from a psychologist who comes to see her younger sister, still traumatized by the school attack.

"They say: 'Study if you cannot go to school -- study at home so that you may become someone in the future.'"

"My brother brings home storybooks and I read them," Amena said. "And I always watch the news."

But she does not understand why boys are allowed to study and girls are not.

"Half of the society is made up of girls and the other half is made up of boys. There is no difference between them," she said.

"Why can't we study? Are we not part of society? Why should only boys have a future?"

- Recent progress -

After US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001, progress was made in girls' education.

The number of schools tripled and female literacy nearly doubled to 30 percent, but the change was largely limited to the cities.

"Afghan women have made great achievements in the past 20 years," said Nasrin Hasani, a 21-year-old teacher at a Kabul secondary school who now helps out with primary pupils.

But the current situation has "lowered both our and the students' morale", she said, questioning the Taliban's reasoning.

"As far as we all know, the religion of Islam has never hindered the education and work of women."

Hasani said she has not experienced any direct threats from the Taliban.

But Amnesty International reported that one high school teacher received death threats and was summoned for prosecution because she used to teach co-educational sport.

Hasani said she was clinging to hope that the Taliban will be "a little different" from their brutal 1996-2001 regime, when women were not even allowed out of their homes unchaperoned.

Born years after 2001, Zainab has no memories of that period and loved going to school until the Taliban directive.

The 12-year-old was stuck looking out of the window with a "terrible feeling" last month when boys went back to school.

"It is quite obvious that things get worse day by day", said Zainab, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

Her 16-year-old sister Malalay said tearfully that she had "feelings of despair and fear".

Malalay, whose name has also been changed, passes her time helping around the house, cleaning, washing dishes and doing laundry.

She said she tries not to cry in front of her mother "because there are a lot of pressures on her".

The teen had dreams of promoting women's rights and speaking out against the men depriving her of her rights.

"My rights are to go to school and university," she said.

"All my dreams and plans are now buried."



Netanyahu Survives Opposition Bid to Dissolve Parliament

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Netanyahu Survives Opposition Bid to Dissolve Parliament

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government survived an opposition bid to dissolve parliament on Thursday, as lawmakers rejected a bill that could have paved the way for snap elections.

Out of the Knesset's 120 members, 61 voted against the proposal, with 53 in favor.

The opposition had introduced the bill hoping to force elections with the help of ultra-Orthodox parties in the governing coalition angry at Netanyahu over the contentious issue of exemptions from military service for their community.

While the opposition is composed mainly of centrist and leftist groups, ultra-Orthodox parties that are propping up Netanyahu's government had earlier threatened to back the motion.

The results of the vote Thursday morning, however, showed that most ultra-Orthodox lawmakers ultimately did not back the opposition bill, with just a small number voting in favor.

The opposition will now have to wait six months before it can try again.

Before the vote, Yuli Edelstein, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, announced that after lengthy discussions, parties had agreed on the "principles on which the draft conscription law will be based".

Edelstein, who chairs the foreign affairs and defense committee, did not specify the terms of the agreement.

"As I said all along -- only a real, effective bill that leads to an expansion of the (Israeli military's) recruitment base will emerge from the committee I chair," he wrote on social media platform X.

"This is historic news, and we are on the path to real reform in Israeli society and strengthening the security of the State of Israel."

Edelstein had earlier put forward a bill aimed at increasing the number of ultra-Orthodox conscripted, and tightening the penalties for those who refuse to serve.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, said the government was seeing the beginning of the end.

"When coalitions begin to fall apart, they fall apart. It started and this is what it looks like when a government begins to collapse," he said.

Ultra-Orthodox parties had been given a choice between losing a law on their exemption from military service, or losing their place in the government, and they chose exemption, Lapid added.

"The government helped them... organize the exemption of tens of thousands of healthy young people," he said, referring to ultra-Orthodox Israelis.

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi hit back, saying the coalition government was "moving forward" and "stronger than ever".

Earlier on Wednesday, opposition leaders had said their decision to bring the dissolution bill to the Knesset for a vote was "made unanimously and is binding on all factions".

They said that all opposition parties would freeze their lawmaking activities to focus on "the overthrow of the government".

Netanyahu's coalition is one of the most right-wing in the country's history. It includes two ultra-Orthodox parties -- Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ).

The two parties had threatened to back the motion for early elections.

'Existential danger'

Military service is mandatory in Israel but, under a ruling that dates back to the country's creation when the ultra-Orthodox were a very small community, men who devote themselves full-time to the study of Jewish scripture are given a de facto pass.

Whether that should change has been a long-running issue.

Efforts to scrap the exemption have intensified during the nearly 20-month war in Gaza as the military looks for extra manpower.

Netanyahu is under pressure from his Likud party to draft more ultra-Orthodox men -- a red line for parties such as Shas, who demand a law guaranteeing their constituents permanent exemption from military service.

Ahead of the vote in the early hours of Thursday morning, Israeli media reported that officials from Netanyahu's coalition were holding talks with ultra-Orthodox leaders hoping to find common ground.

In an apparent bid to allow time for those negotiations, Netanyahu's coalition filled the Knesset's agenda with bills to delay the vote.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that bringing down the government during wartime would pose "an existential danger" to Israel's future.

"History will not forgive anyone who drags the state of Israel into elections during a war," Smotrich told parliament, adding that there was a "national and security need" for ultra-Orthodox to fight in the military.

Netanyahu's government is a coalition between his Likud party, far-right groups and ultra-Orthodox parties, whose departure would leave it without a parliamentary majority.