Girls return to schools in northern Afghanistan

Girls have returned to some secondary schools in a northern province of Afghanistan, Taliban officials and teachers said on Tuesday, but they remain barred from classrooms in much of the country.

The new hardline government also announced at a stage-managed rally that some female civil servants have been called back to work and that a backlog of salaries would be paid, in signs the Taliban may be trying to soften its public image after 50 days in power. A video posted by the group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen showed dozens of schoolgirls in black, some wearing white head scarves and others with black face veils, sitting in chairs waving Taliban flags.

“Girls are going to high schools in Khan Abad, Kunduz Province,” the Doha-based spokesman said on Twitter, Mr Shaheen has been nominated as the new Afghan government’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

But in Kabul, education ministry official Mohammad Abid said there had been no policy change from the Taliban’s interim central government, telling AFP on Tuesday: “High schools still remain closed for girls.”

The Taliban, notorious for their brutal and oppressive rule from 1996 to 2001, have faced international disapproval after effectively excluding women and girls from education and work across the country, while incrementally stripping away Afghans’ freedoms.

They permitted girls to attend primary school from the start, but have maintained that neither they nor their female teachers could return to secondary school yet. The group have said girls can return to high school once their security and strict gender segregation under the group’s restrictive interpretation of sharia law can be ensured.

Last month Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference that work was “continuing over the issues of education and work of women and girls”, saying schools will reopen “as soon as possible”, without providing a time frame.

“More time is needed … instructions on how to deal with their work, their services and their education are needed because the system has changed and an Islamic system is in place.”

In the news clip shared by Mr Shaheen, a reporter for Radio Television Afghanistan can be heard saying “schools are open for girls, and there are no restrictions”.

A Taliban member is then interviewed on camera saying girls and boys from grades seven to 12 are at school in the district, adding “there are not any issues for anyone so far”.

A head teacher in Kunduz city, the provincial capital, told AFP that girls in a high school in the Imam Sahib district had gone back to classes.