(Doha) The United States expects the Taliban to reverse its decision to exclude girls from schools in Afghanistan “in the coming days”, US envoy to Afghanistan Thomas West said on Saturday.
Posted at 12:03 p.m.
The Taliban, in power in Afghanistan since August 2021, reversed their decision on Wednesday to allow girls to study in middle and high schools, just hours after the long-announced reopening.
“I am hopeful that we will see them reconsider (this) decision in the coming days,” said Thomas West on the sidelines of the Forum in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
The United States has called off talks with the hardline Taliban due to the ban announced on Wednesday.
“I was surprised by the turnaround last Wednesday […] It is above all a violation of the trust of the Afghan people,” the American official said.
“Our policy is not against girls’ education,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told AFP.
According to him, “there are some practical problems” which have “not been resolved before the deadline for the opening of girls’ schools on March 23”.
Observers fear that the country’s new masters will again ban school for girls, as they did during their first reign, from 1996 to 2001.
For Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who survived a Pakistani Taliban assassination attempt at the age of 15 and is a longtime campaigner for girls’ education, it will be “much harder this time” for the Taliban to keep schools closed.
The difference in 2022 is that “women have seen what it means to be educated”, after two decades in a war-torn Afghanistan led by a US-backed government.