Sunday, February 05, 2023

Why the Taliban Bans Women (Afghan Report 54)

(NOTE: This is the latest in a series of reports from an Afghan friend about life under Taliban rule. I am concealing his identity to protect his identity.)

Dear David: 

Earlier this week, Pakistani diplomat Akram Munir caused a stir when he stated, "The restrictions that have been put by the Afghan interim government, flow not so much from a religious perspective as from a particular cultural perspective of the Pashtun culture, which requires women to be kept at home. And this is a peculiar, distinctive cultural reality of Afghanistan which has not changed for hundreds of years.” 

Many Pashtuns, including Naseer Ahmad Faiq, the Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations, objected to his statement and rejected it as untrue. So the question remains as to where the banning of education on girls comes from – Pashtun culture or Islam? 

Two years ago, I went to some schools in the countryside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province. There were two villages side by side, with Hazaras living in one and Pashtuns in the other. In the Hazara school, male and female students both attended, with. girls coming to school in the morning and boys in the afternoon. 

In the schools attended by Pashtuns, only boys attended. Female students do not go to schools at all, not even primary schools. When I asked the teachers why girls did not come to school, they said it was against Pashtun village culture.

Another prominent feature among Pashtuns is that they tend to have larger families than other ethnic groups. I had always thought they did this to grow the Moslem population, but a  Pashtun friend told me having many children is not a religious issue but a matter of “honor among Pashtuns. They don’t even care whether their children have enough food." 

There is nothing in the Quran banning the education of women. Therefore, in my opinion, the reason the Taliban is banning girls from school in Afghanistan is based almost completely in Pashtun culture. The Taliban are primarily Pashtuns, and they are trying to impose their culture on the rest of us. 

***
(Note: There are numerous ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Pashtuns are the largest, comprising about 40 percent of the total population. The Taliban leaders are Pashtun. The Hazaras are one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country and have formed the main resistance against Taliban rule.)

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