http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-relent-on-education-of-girls-20110114-19r89.html
Taliban relent on education of girls Jon Boone January 15, 2011 KABUL: The Taliban are prepared to drop their ban on girls' schools, an influential Afghan cabinet minister says. The Education Minister, Farooq Wardak, says the movement has decided to scrap the ban on female education that helped earn it worldwide infamy in the 1990s. Mr Wardak said the Taliban's leadership had undergone a profound change since losing power after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. ''It is attitudinal change, it is behavioural change, it is cultural change,'' he told the Times Educational Supplement. ''What I am hearing at the very upper policy level of the Taliban is that they are no more opposing education and also girls' education.'' The minister, one of the most trusted members of the inner circle of the President, Hamid Karzai, has a central role in official efforts to bring the Taliban to peace talks. Taliban spokesmen were unavailable for comment, and the Taliban have never made any public statements that back up Mr Wardak's claim. The Taliban insurgency has killed teachers in schools that have mixed classes. Alex Strick van Linschoten, a leading analyst of the Taliban, said an announcement was unlikely in the near future. ''It will all come up in any potential negotiations and this is one 'concession' they could make to the foreigners,'' he said. Experts say that the attitude of the conservative Islamic movement towards women's education has always been far more ambivalent than popularly understood. Mullah Zaeef, a former senior Taliban official who served as Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan in 2001, said the movement was not against educating women and that the ban on girls' schools was only a ''temporary measure''. Analysts say the policy was largely due to Taliban concerns about boys and girls being educated together and male teachers overseeing female classes. Amir Mansory, an education expert at the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, which has supported schools in the country for decades, said 33,000 girls continued to go to school in the late 1990s, despite the official ban. ''It was a sort of hidden policy,'' Mr Mansory said. ''No one said girls could go to school, but in the provinces Taliban officials would approach me asking for the Swedish Committee's help in supporting girls' schools.'' And while insurgents have closed down many schools around the country in recent years, Mr Mansory said they have been actively supported in some Taliban-controlled areas, including in Paktika and Wardak provinces. ''I personally think the Taliban are not against education but simply against a Western type of education,'' Mr Mansory said. ''And if local people want to educate their girls the Taliban know they can't do anything to stop that.'' Taliban leaders have rethought many of their notorious policies of the 1990s, Mr Strick van Linschoten said. For example, during the Taliban government mobile phones and video were considered un-Islamic but both technologies are now used extensively by insurgents. Guardian News & Media [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
