Students throughout Afghanistan have begun to return to the university for the first time since the Taliban invade power, and in some cases women have been separated from their male colleagues with curtains or boards in the middle of the classroom.
What happens at universities and schools throughout the country is being watched by foreign powers, who want the movement of Islamic militants to respect women’s rights in return for vital assistance and diplomatic involvement.
When he last ruled from 1996-2001, the group banned the girls from school and women from the University and work.
Apart from the guarantee in recent weeks that women’s rights will be respected in accordance with Islamic law, it is not clear what it means in practice.
Teachers and students at the universities in the largest cities in Afghanistan – Kabul, Kandahar and Herat – told Reuters that female students were separated in class, taught separately or limited to certain parts of the campus.
“Making the curtains is not acceptable,” Anjila, a 21-year-old student at Kabul University who returned to find his classroom partitioned, told Reuters by telephone.
“I really feel bad when I enter the class …
we will gradually return to 20 years ago.” Even before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Anjila said female students sat apart from men.
But classrooms are not physically divided.
Documents that describe the guidelines for continuing the class circulated by the Association of Private University in Afghanistan which are listed in steps must wear a headscarf and separate the entrance to female students.
It is also said that women teachers must be hired to teach female students, and women must be taught separately or, in smaller classes, separated by curtains.
It was not clear whether the document was seen by Reuters, representing the Taliban official policy.
The group spokesman did not immediately comment on the document, in photographs of classrooms divided or on how the university would be run.
The Taliban said last week that schools had to continue but male and female must be separated.
A senior Taliban official told Reuters that class dividers such as “truly acceptable” curtains, and those who remember “Afghanistan’s limited resources and labor, the best is” having the same teacher teaching both sides of the class.
” Photographs distributed by Avicenna University in Kabul, and circulated widely on social media, showing the gray curtain ran down the class center, with female students wearing long robes and headlides but their faces were visible.
Some teachers said there was uncertainty over what rules would be imposed under the Taliban, who had not formed a government more than three weeks after they seized Kabul with almost fired in anger.
Returning to their power has been worried about several women, who are afraid of losing the rights they strive for the past two decades, in the face of resistance from many families and officials in Muslim countries that are very conservative.
A professor of journalism at Herat University in the west of the country told Reuters he decided to divide the first class into two parts, first teaching and later.
Of the 120 students registered for his trip, less than a quarter appeared at school on Monday.
A number of students and teachers have escaped from the country, and the fate of the rapidly developing private media sector from the country suddenly thrown into doubts.
“Students are very nervous today,” he said.
“I told them to keep coming and continuing to learn and in the coming days the new government would set a rule.” Sher Azam, a 37-year-old teacher at a private university in Kabul, said his Institute had provided a teacher of choice to hold separate classes for men and women, or partition classrooms with curtains and boards.
But he is worried about how many students will return, given the economic crisis, the Taliban victory has been triggered.
“I don’t know how many students will return to school, because there are financial problems and some students come from families who have lost their jobs”.
A curtain divides male students, women as Afghan University reopens
