“After the Taliban shut universities for women, my only hope was to get a scholarship [that] would help me study abroad… When the Taliban officials saw our tickets and student visas, they said girls are not allowed to leave Afghanistan on student visas,” says a 20-year-old Afghan student interviewed by the BBC.
She like many others, was granted a scholarship to study at the University of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Emirati billionaire businessman Sheikh Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor in December 2022 after the Taliban banned women from university.
“This is an important and alarming step beyond the extraordinary level of cruelty the Taliban already engage in by denying girls and women education,” Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch said of this recent move.
According to Afghanistan’s acting minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, the reason for the ban was because women had not been observing hijab inside the park. He called on religious clerics and security agencies to forbid women from entering until a solution was found.
Gradually but surely Afghanistan has turned into a country where it is a crime to be a girl.
