Girls’ schools closure: US cancels planned talks with Taliban in Doha

DOHA/WASHINGTON: The United States expects the Taliban to reverse its decision to keep girls out of Afghan schools “in coming days”, US special envoy Thomas West said Saturday.

The United States called off talks with the hardline administration on the sidelines of the Doha Forum in response to the ban announced on Wednesday.

West who led talks with the Taliban, told the forum: "I´m hopeful that we’ll see a reversal of this decision in coming days. "I was surprised at the turnaround this past Wednesday and I think you have seen the world react and condemn this. It is a breach first and foremost of the Afghan people’s trust."

West said the Taliban, who retook Kabul last August after a two-decade war against a Western-backed government, had given other countries assurances during talks in recent months that girls would be allowed back to schools.

The Taliban hard line closed girls’ secondary schools just hours after they reopened on Wednesday, prompting international anger. Suhail Shaheen, head of the Taliban representative office in Doha, said in a text message to AFP that the group did not have a policy against girls´ education. "There are some practical issues to be sorted out at first. Unfortunately, they were not resolved before the scheduled deadline of opening girls schools on March 23," Shaheen said.

Meanwhile, the United States said Friday that it has cancelled planned talks in Doha with the Taliban after the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan shut girls’ secondary schools.

"We have cancelled some of our engagements, including planned meetings in Doha around the Doha Forum, and have made clear that we see this decision as a potential turning point in our engagement," State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter said.

"This decision by the Taliban, if it is not swiftly reversed, will profoundly harm the Afghan people, the country´s prospects for economic growth, and the Taliban´s ambition to improve their relations with the international community," Porter told reporters.

"For the sake of Afghanistan’s future and the Taliban’s relations with the international community we urge the Taliban to live up to their commitments and to their people," she said. "We also stand with Afghan girls and their families, who see education as a path to realising the full potential of Afghanistan’s society and economy," she added.

The Taliban’s decision to keep schools shuttered for girls came after a meeting late Tuesday by senior officials in the southern city of Kandahar, the movement´s de facto power center and conservative spiritual heartland. It followed months of work by the international community to address the issue of supporting teacher stipends, and came just as Afghan girls were eagerly heading back to school for the first time in seven months.

In a joint statement Thursday the foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Norway and the United States, plus the high representative of the European Union, said the Taliban´s decision will harm the group´s prospects for legitimacy.

Meanwhile, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai said on Saturday the Taliban´s ban on girls´ education won´t last forever, emphasising that Afghan women now know what it is to be "empowered".

The hard-line Afghan regime closed girls’ secondary schools just hours after reopening them this week, prompting a small protest by women and girls in the capital Kabul. "I think it was much easier for the Taliban (to enforce) a ban on girls´ education back in 1996," Malala told the Doha Forum. "It is much harder this time -- that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered.

This time is going to be much harder for the Taliban to maintain the ban on girls´ education. "This ban will not last forever." "They shouldn´t be recognised if they didn´t recognise the human rights of women and girls," she said.

Fawzia Koofi, former chairperson of Afghanistan´s Women, Civil Society and Human Rights Commission, told the forum: "It´s basically a genocide of a generation." "How could anyone in this world in the 21st century... ban girls from education? I don´t think the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world, should accept," she said.