LAST UPDATE | 20 Dec 2022

THE TALBIAN AUTHORITIES today ordered an indefinite ban on university education for Afghan girls, the ministry of higher education said in a letter issued to all government and private universities.

“You all are informed to implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,” said the letter signed by Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem.

The spokesman for the ministry, Ziaullah Hashimi, who tweeted the letter, confirmed the order in a text message to AFP.

The ban on higher education comes less than three months after thousands of girls and women sat university entrance exams across the country, with many aspiring to choose engineering and medicine as future careers.

After the takeover of the country by the hard-line Islamists in August last year, universities were forced to implement new rules including gender segregated classrooms and entrances, while women were only permitted to be taught by women professors or old men.

Most teenage girls across the country have already been banned from secondary school education, severely limiting university intake.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have freed two Americans in detention in Afghanistan, on the same day that the militant regime faced condemnation for banning women at universities.

“This, we understand, to have been a goodwill gesture on the part of the Taliban. This was not part of any swap of prisoners or detainees. There was no money that exchanged hands,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

The two Americans were released to Qatar, which has played a key role supporting US interests in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.

Price said that confidentiality rules forbade him from offering more details on the two Americans.

CNN reported that one of them was Ivor Shearer, a filmmaker arrested in August with his Afghan producer — whose fate is unclear — while filming the site of a US drone attack that killed Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“The irony of them granting us a goodwill gesture on a day where they undertake a gesture like this to the Afghan people, it’s not lost on us.” Price said. ”But it is a question for the Taliban themselves regarding the timing of this.”

The United States has repeatedly condemned the Taliban’s track record since the militants swept back to power last year when President Joe Biden pulled out US troops, leading the two-decade-old Western-backed government to collapse.

But the Biden administration said that the Taliban were largely helpful during the takeover on letting out US citizens.

- © AFP 2022