No US talks with the Taliban after girls are expelled from school

After the closure of girls’ high schools in Afghanistan, the US canceled scheduled talks with radical Islamist Taliban in Doha. “We canceled some of our commitments, in particular the scheduled meetings in Doha,” a US State Department spokesman said Friday in Washington. “And we made it clear that we saw this decision as a potential turning point in our commitments,” he added.

The talks were originally supposed to take place on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, which takes place in the Qatar capital over the weekend. Islamists reversed that decision shortly after the official re-opening of girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan on Wednesday. Thousands of students were sent home after a few hours on the first day of classes in August.

Women’s right to education is one of the main conditions of the international community’s aid to the unrecognized Taliban government. When the Islamists took power last August, they officially shut down all schools due to the crown pandemic. Two months later, only the boys and a few younger girls were allowed to resume classes.