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Strictures Lifted on Eduction for Children of Taliban Elite

"The Iqra system is very good for Taliban who are looking to educate their boys and girls."

"It's an Islamic educational system that teaches both modern school subjects and madrassah subjects."

"Most of our friends were looking for this kind of mixed system, and after this system was established in some cities like Karachi and Quetta, they were sending their boys and girls to these schools."

Taliban official located in Pakistan

"In the past, it was not common practice because very few women were literate but now you can find well-educated women everywhere."

"Education allows them to live a good life. They know the rights of a husband better and can better train your sons and daughters."

"This is why a literate wife is a necessity nowadays."

Taliban Minister 

 

"Taliban members and their families who live here [Qatar] have strong demands for modern education and no one opposes it for either boys or girls -- of any age."

Taliban official based in Qatar

The Taliban claim Afghan girls will be able to return fully to schools from March 21, although lessons will be segregated   Credit: Kiana Hayeri

Like Soviet leaders preaching collectivism in the USSR, while living in their dachas and driving costly European-model vehicles and leaving the Russian-made rattletraps to the masses, the Taliban will permit girls in Afghanistan to be formally educated only until age twelve, but when it comes to the daughters and sons of the Taliban elite and officials, exposure to higher education is a must. The privileged leaderships of all ideological movements see themselves as elevated and entitled while the masses are given to struggle for existence.

 

An Afghan woman wearing a burka begs while taking care of her daughter in Kabul on Oct. 7. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)

 

The daughters of Taliban officials are sent to schools outside the country while within Afghanistan classrooms remain closed to female students. Children of high-ranking officials are sent overseas to state schools and universities, and see nothing wrong with depriving ordinary children in Afghanistan from  formal education opportunities. Millions of Afghan girls are now languishing without an education as a reflection of the Taliban ideology.

Since being posted to Qatar members of the Taliban negotiating team resident on Doha began sending their daughters to school in Qatar: "Since everybody in the neighbourhood was going to school our children demanded they go to school too", explained one Taliban official. A current Taliban minister's daughter whose father was a member of the Taliban leadership council, now studies medicine at a Qatari university, according to a report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN).

Children have been left in Doha when their fathers, members of the Taliban's office in Qatar, returned to Kabul, for concerns of disrupting their education. The Taliban, fierce foes of educating girls, now see the advantages of female education as long as the females are their own. The affairs of Afghanistan are so mismanaged millions of Afghans face endemic poverty, with the threat of starvation hanging over people under duress.

It has become a matter of great importance to these Taliban of privilege to send their children to schools combining "Western" learning with religious teaching. The system known as the Iqra system in neighbouring Pakistan where many children of Taliban leaders who lived in exile for decades find it convenient to have educated daughters. Others enroll their children in private schools in Qatar operating on the Pakistani model curriculum while teaching in English.

Ravaged by poverty since the Taliban took control of the country and both Western NGOs and diplomats left along with international investment, the children of Afghanistan suffer malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization; the United Nations warning that 97 percent of Afghans live below the poverty line, and the Taliban banned girls from attending school in over two-thirds of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan.

Students in a primary school in Kandahar in September. The Taliban have refused to permit girls to return to high school, a key demand of the international community. (Bilal Guler/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Labels: Afghanistan, Formal Education, Poverty, Privileged Children, Starvation, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 09, 2022