Abdul Aziz Mohibbi and Noah Coburn
Women wave Taliban flags as they sit inside an auditorium at Kabul University’s education center during a demonstration in support of the Taliban government in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 11, 2021.Credit: AP Photo/Felipe Dana
Three years ago, Roya was well on her way to her lifelong dream of a career in medicine. She excelled in her high school classes and took extra tutoring sessions to prepare for the Kankor or university entrance exam. When she took the exam in early 2021, she was thrilled to receive one of the highest marks in the country.
Now she says she regrets all that work. “There is no future for me in Afghanistan,” Roya said.
Three years of Taliban rule have made it clear that policies toward higher education are not just about separating men and women, but are about remaking Afghan society. Taliban policies and oppression have worked to gradually, but effectively, undo much of the expansion of higher education between 2001 and 2021 and have changed how a generation of Afghans are thinking about their futures.
While international media attention focused mostly on the banning of girls from secondary education, the Taliban’s strategy toward higher education suggests they view this area as a priority in their work to remake Afghan society. Minister of Higher Education Neda Mohammad is a close ally of Hibatullah, the supreme leader of the Taliban regime, and the head of the Office of the National Examination Authority is a key member of the Haqqani group.
This is an extreme reorientation from the Ministry of Higher Education of the democratically-elected government, which with international support, expanded the number of students in universities to almost half a million between 2001 and 2021.
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