Girls attend a class at a secret school in Kabul in November 2021. ADRIEN VAUTIER / LE PICTORIUM POUR “LE MONDE”
Refusal of the Taliban’s orders is almost no longer about arms. Now he’s mostly a civilian. But the last islands of resistance, especially in the area of girls’ education, collapse under pressure from Afghan Islamists.
It has been almost a year since school girls over the age of 12 have seen the benches of public schools in Afghanistan. When the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, some public facilities did not reopen in anticipation of the coming policies of Kabul’s new masters. Until then, only private entities had been able to circumvent the Afghan fundamentalists’ injunctions and continue to welcome them. This exception will disappear soon.
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The manager of an English school in the Dasht-e-Barchi district west of Kabul, which is 95% inhabited by the Hazara, a Shia minority, shows his phone and displays the message, released June 13 by Taliban authorities the WhatsApp group was sent from private entities in the Afghan capital. It emanates from the services of the governor of the province of Kabul and aligns the “educational centers” that are not dependent on the Afghan state with the rules of the public sector that are already in force. With one difference: Under certain conditions, those over 12 will still have access to extracurricular subjects.
“Segregation will be the norm”
“This means that here, explains the educational director and administrator of the English school, Najibullah Rezayee, which welcomes 300 to 400 young people, from the age of 24 segregation will be the norm in the classroom, also for teachers, but also over time . Some come in the morning, others in the afternoon. In fact, this puts our school at risk because our twelve teachers have to work two to three times as many hours for the same salary. We had managed to stay under the radar, it’s over. »
Looking out of her office window into the garden, one cannot miss the short saffron tunic, jeans and light green veil that covers only half of Sahar’s hair, 16, who is seated on a bench. They say everything about this vivacious young girl whose dark eyes and voice suddenly come alive when she talks about the Taliban law. “Black is not a colour, how can one want to separate the two parts of the same world? They are afraid of women because they are basically stronger than men. »
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