The Taliban Ministry of Higher Education has confiscated Rahnavard, Rah-e Saadat and Taj private universities located in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, due to political activities of their founders. The universities’ revenue will be transferred to the Taliban treasury, sources said.
According to sources in Balkh province, Taj Private University founded by General Abdul Malik, a former senior Uzbek commander in northern Afghanistan, Rahnavard Private University founded by Abbas Ibrahimzadeh, a former Balkh MP and leader of the New Afghanistan Unity Party, and Rah-e Saadat University, founded by Ghulam Sarwar Saadat, a former Takhar MP in the Afghan House of Representatives, have been confiscated in favor of the Taliban government, and the revenues of these universities will be transferred to the Taliban treasury. The three universities are among the largest in Balkh, which had thousands of students before the collapse of the former Afghan government due to the huge investment of their owners.
“With the collapse of the previous Afghan government, a person named Ahmad Wazir Safi was appointed Deputy Minister of Education for Northern Afghanistan by the Taliban Ministry of Education,” said Momen Watandar, a pseudonym for a private university professor in Balkh. “During this time, he is the one who decides on the fate of private and public universities in Balkh.”
According to Momen, the Taliban’s deputy minister of education has appointed a member of the group as a representative at each university to oversee the performance of students, professors, managers and the implementation of the Taliban Ministry of Education’s orders. Wazir Safi has fired the heads of public and private universities and appointed new ones. Meanwhile, the administration of the three private universities of Rahnavard, Taj and Rah-e Saadat has been completely handed over to the Taliban due to the political activity of their founders.
He added that meanwhile, the Taliban Ministry of Education had recently issued new directives to universities recommending the imposition of discriminatory and severe restrictions on students, faculty and staff.
According to Momen, after applying these strict and discriminatory restrictions on the educational space in universities, some universities in Balkh have lost up to 80% of their students. Before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and imposed these restrictions, the number of students at Rah-e Saadat University reached 4,000, but now it has dropped to 1,200. Also, before the Taliban took over, the number of students at Rahnavard University reached about 7,000, but now that number has lowered to 3,000.
Meanwhile, another source at Balkh University says that Ahmad Wazir Safi, the Taliban’s deputy minister of education, in a meeting with officials at private universities in Balkh on Tuesday, November 16th, gave new instructions on how and what to wear the professors, students, and staff of the universities and how to separate the classes for girls and boys. After this meeting, the details of the ministry’s order were published in leaflets and posted on the walls of Balkh public and private universities.
A student in Balkh posted a photo of the Taliban Ministry of Education’s new orders, citing discriminatory restrictions on women, and said he gave up the university the day he read the contents of the leaflet.
Saber Ghaffari, a professor at another private university in Balkh, said: I left {my job} forever. The orders are highly inhumane and anti-women. “The Taliban have appointed a mullah and several gunmen to monitor the implementation of their orders in the campus of universities.”
Saber adds that he has left university because it is difficult to work in such an atmosphere of insolence, humiliation and discrimination, and he fears that one day the Taliban will flog him under the guise of smiling at a student in the classroom.
According to Saber, two weeks have passed since the reopening of universities in Balkh, but only a handful of male students in the last semester have attended classes. Almost all students in the first and second semesters of universities have dropped out; Because they either do not have the money for university tuition, or their future is dim and they do not like to study in an atmosphere filled of impertinence and terror. On the other hand, the Taliban Ministry of Education has banned the entry of female employees in many universities and has stopped holding graduation ceremonies until further notice.
What is the Taliban’s new plan for universities?
A copy of the Taliban Ministry of Education’s new decisions provided published shows that in the first phase, female students and university professors were required to “observe the sharia veil” and that their dressing should be black and full covering.
The second recommendation to universities is that the entrance and exit routes for girls and boys should be separated and classes should be organized separately. Female students are advised to wait at a designated location before classes begin. Girls are strongly advised to “go to their classes regularly and sit in designated places” five minutes before the start of the class and to leave the classes five minutes sooner after the end of the class to get out of the females’ way.
In this plan, the Taliban Ministry of Education has advised all universities to even monitor the vehicles that transport female students and to put curtains between the driver and the students inside the vehicle. The windows of the vehicles must be curtained so that inside the vehicle cannot be viewed from outside.
Universities are advised to appoint a female professor for girls and a male professor for boys, and if there are not enough female professors, only “aged professors with a good reputation” are allowed to teach in girls’ classes from behind a curtain.
The Taliban Ministry of Education’s new decision, entitled “Separation Plan for Teaching Male and Female Students,” has been communicated to all universities, and in each city, a qualified board has been tasked with overseeing its implementation at the universities. University officials have also been warned that they will be punished for violating these orders.
