Depriving Afghan girls of education was one of the Taliban regime’s systematic and devastating abuses against women, which has been strongly condemned around the globe. The Taliban’s prohibitions are not supported by Islamic or international law or even Afghan tradition. The Taliban government’s failure to fulfill its obligations has shifted the attitude and tone of foreign leaders toward Afghanistan. Before being further isolated and destructed by dogmatic mindsets, the Taliban regime must change its internal and foreign policies.
Weaknesses, problems, and deficiencies exist in every ruling group, but, the closure of girls’ schools in Afghanistan over the last year is the most despised shortcoming of the Taliban’s regime, and has caused the defamation of values at the spiritual and national level، It created a vast gap between the people and the ruling party. It is furthermore considered a stain, deforming the reputation of the religious scholars, and will need decades to wash out.
The Taliban officials reluctantly point out the cultural problems, economic obstacles, moral deviations, or incompatible curriculum as the reason behind their unacceptable and unreasonable policies. These excuses have neither been legitimized by Islamic imperatives nor justified by international law. In the long run, it causes us backwardness in every field of our social life.
History and future generations will certainly judge that once upon a time, a ruling group, with claims and slogans to implement true Islamic rule in Afghanistan, closed the doors of schools for millions of girls in this country.
With the precedent set by the Taliban, Afghanistan now has another shameful title: the only country in the world that does not allow girls to attend school.
The closure of schools for the last year for our female children is a gap that brings our social consciousness under question and negates our national pride, while the government officials cannot estimate the damage of closing schools inflicted upon society.
The ignorant society can be a hotbed for hypocrisy, prejudices, and other spiritual illnesses, a working weapon for the enemy, a headache for friends, better accommodation for transmission of external viruses, and a pawn for colonialism and proxy war players. A good fighting soldier and an outstanding instrument for intelligence networks.
Afghanistan is currently a highly isolated country from the world – the reasons for isolation are mostly the outcomes of our rulers’ domestic and international shortcomings regarding the responsibilities we adopted.
Opportunities and challenges exist in the way we move forward. In these sorts of circumstances, dynamic leadership enjoys the potential of converting challenges to opportunities, but we seemingly lack the leadership that can turn challenges into opportunities. To deal with severe global sanctions that starve the people, and face the country with challenges, using threatening language by the Taliban officials is not a proper and successful strategy to get the country out of trouble.
Unfortunately, the country’s political, economic, and security situation has gradually been deteriorating after Afghanistan’s takeover by the Taliban. In addition, the unbearable and unreasonable huge gap between the Afghans and the world community including countries of the region is dangerously getting wider. We must accept that in Afghanistan this worsened and the critical situation was avoidable.
Replacing the experienced and patriotic people from government jobs with totally incompetent unskilled ones, censoring media activities, committing violence against protestors, flag disputes, intimidating former security personnel, and most importantly, closing girls’ schools are evil practices that can neither be justified by Shariah nor by Afghan culture. On the contrary, It creates a gap between the people and the system.
Although most of the Doha agreement has not yet been publicly known, the failure to form an inclusive government, incompetency to cope with the expectations of the regional powers, weak record of basic human rights, the termination of intra-Afghan talks and the death of Al-Zawahiri are the adequate reasons that Taliban failed to fulfill their commitments. Blaming others would neither acquit us nor is justified.
The attitude of the international community is not in our favor. Implementing the Doha agreement by all parties concerned seems to be a better solution to the current critical scenario. Afghans do not favor the use of force by either side to tackle the problems, but unfortunately, the justifications and priorities of each side are different.
It is impossible that everything would be up to our expectations. Regrettably, the major concern is the Taliban’s failure to fulfill its commitments. In the light of Islamic Shariah, Muslims must fulfill their commitments.
Unluckily the Taliban government has not been able to act with responsibility and adopt the strategy based on principles, national values, bilateral understanding, and moderation, internally and externally. They have rather pursued the policy of confrontation, the trend that has taken our country to total isolation globally.
However, the Taliban government surprisingly reacted to the use of our airspace by a US drone after the killing of Al-Zawahiri, while our airspace had been constantly used since the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban. To avoid facing even unprecedented critical situations, we urge the authorities that the recent attacks and the changing tone of the world leaders regarding Afghanistan is a matter of great concern and should definitely be taken seriously and addressed accordingly.
Considering our domestic weaknesses, current global position, the recent remarks by the world leaders, and the ongoing critical situations, we seriously urge those leaders of the Taliban who, in addition to their religious knowledge, have the talent to understand the sensitivities of the issues and the ability to assess the current situation to initiate huge reforms within the structural body of the government including internal and external policies, before it gets too late to handle the crisis.
It seems useless that some extreme mindset elements in the government get stuck in small and insignificant issues. The top leadership should act with full determination and Afghan courage and leave expediency behind, try to convince the leaders with a hardline mentality through real discussion, through well-known and well-reputed religious scholars of the country and the Ummah for logical reasoning, and prevent further destruction of the country.
Originally published in Matrix Magazine
Dated: October 3, 2022
By Abdul Wahid Wahid
Abdul Wahid is a senior journalist from Afghanistan who contributes regularly toTaand, Nunn, Asia and 8am.af. He can be reached at waheedkhan164@gmail.com.
