While delivering a speech at the UN, the ambassador termed the culture of Pashtuns ‘strange’, adding that for ages they are trying to keep women at home.
It is pertinent to mention here that his statement has received backlash on social media, netizens have considered the statement derogatory to Pashtun people and stressed that Pashtuns have been sacrificed by war.
Recently, the Taliban in Afghanistan have sent letters to all private educational institutions and warned them to refuse to register girls for academic sessions. Girls have no access to higher education as the schools for girls above grade six have been shut.
Read also: Afghan Taliban Crack Down on Women’s Education
Ever since the Afghan Talibans take-over after the US withdrawal of it’s troops in August 2021, they have been slowly but gradually bringing back an era of darkness that so many people fought and died to end in 2001.
One of the first major decisions that the Taliban took was to bring back the oppressive measures against women and free speech that they employed in their previous reign of terror before 2001. In the past two years, they banned women from appearing in the media. They reinstated the strict dress code for women under threat of violence and have recently been banning both female students as well as teachers and professors from appearing in educational institutes.
The West has also done nothing to relieve the situation. In fact, humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has halted for two years merely because of the Taliban regime’s presence. US President Biden had even frozen $7 billion of Afghan taxpayer money in the US and has promised to replenish the 9/11 victims fund with it. Not the money of corrupt Afghan officials or terrorists, but Afghan taxpayer money.
In the Afghan Taliban’s most recent move against women, they banned female high school students from giving the ‘Kankor’.
The ‘Kankor’ is a university entrance exam that is mandatory for any high school student that wants to pursue higher education in Afghanistan. Without it, no student can be allowed to attend any Afghan university.