Banning women from NGOs exposes rifts in Taliban ranks

Kabul [Afghanistan], January 3 : Banning women's education and stopping them to work for NGOs in Afghanistan has not only triggered international condemnation but also resulted in internal rifts among the Taliban's ranks with public protests against the diktats, reported France 24.
The France 24 report quotes former US special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad from Washington.
In a telephonic interview, the former envoy said that there are signs of division over the Taliban's hardline policies. And this has reached a tipping point in a country which has a history of settling differences at a gunpoint and it can have consequences for the international community and its own people.
Reports of rifts within Taliban ranks have increased since the edict banning women from working in NGOs was issued, France 24, a news television network based in Paris reported.
"Within the Taliban, this is a minority view. The majority, even in the leadership, is opposed to this decision," Khalilzad said.
According to the France 24 report, Khalilzad, who was born and raised in Afghanistan, stepped down from his special envoy post in 2021. But is still in touch with some Taliban officials although he declined to name them. "I talked to them in the past and I'm talking to them now and they are very much against this decision," he asserted.
The entire problem is entirely a divide between the moderate Taliban officials and the inner circle of arch-conservatives around the Taliban's reclusive emir, Hibatullah Akhunzada, based in the city of Kandahar.
Dubbed "the Kandaharis" or sometimes, "the shura" (council), the rural old guard is widely believed to be responsible for the Taliban's most controversial policies, including restrictions on female education and the reintroduction of corporal punishment, including public lashings.
According to the report, the first sign of these differences in the Taliban ranks was visible in March 2022 when decisions were made regarding the education ban on female students.
For months leading up to the March 23 reopening of Afghan schools after the winter break, Taliban officials promised that the ban on girls attending high schools would be lifted.
But just a few hours before the scheduled reopening, as Afghan girls waited at school gates, the Taliban abruptly reversed course. When the last-minute ban order reached the schools, news teams, invited by the education ministry, recorded devastating testimonies of girls in their school uniforms sobbing in despair, the report said.
While addressing the press questions, Taliban officials were caught giving explanations related to Islamic principles, it said.
France 24 report further mentions that later the Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, appealed for the reopening of the schools for girls in a televised speech to a gathering of top Taliban officials and leaders in Kabul.
Further, Jacinto in his report said that Stanikzai so far has gotten away with his public expression of disagreement. Other Taliban ministers have not been as fortunate.
Even in August 2021, when Taliban took control of Afghanistan, then-acting minister of higher education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani had announced that universities across the country would have separate classrooms for females. This decision never mentioned banning of University education for females. Moreover, enabling them to continue classes for women, often with a curtain separating them from male students, according to Jacinto's report.
But, by October 2022 Haqqani was fired and replaced by arch-conservative Nida Mohammad Nadim, who is notorious for his opposition to female education, calling it un-Islamic. And just two months after Nadim's appointment women were barred from attending university education.
Although it must be also noted that the Taliban's first education minister, Noorullah Munir was replaced by the head of Kandahar's provincial council, Habibullah Agha last year, just because Munir had announced in September 2021 to reporters that women will be allowed to study in schools according to Sharia law.