Taliban fighters ‘point guns at women’ & tell them to go home amid #LetHerLearn campaign

In what is being deemed a reminder of medieval 1990 Afghanistan, Taliban fighters are aiming gunpoint at the women trying to enter the universities, asking them to go back home just days after announcing a ban on university education for women. An Afghan female student told The Independent newspaper that Taliban fighters were threatening the women with guns to deter them from entering the universities and resuming classes. This has triggered shock, panic, and anxiety among female students who fear their education will no longer be completed. 

Shabnam Nasimi, the former policy special adviser to the minister for Afghan resettlement and minister for refugees, told the paper that she was told by the Afghan female student that she was heading to Kardan university in Kabul where "boys were allowed to enter the gates but the Taliban pointed their guns at the girls and told them to go home." Another student, a female, shocked at the thought of termination of her education, attempted to take her life, Salma Niazi, the editor of The Afghan Times, told The Independent from Kabul.

“The international community should realize that the Taliban have not changed. They were only playing soft to win the Doha peace deal that contributed to their return to power,” Dr. Qasim Wafayezada, the former minister of information and culture in the Ashraf Ghani administration told the paper. 

Taliban, he said,  have erased the presence of women from Afghan society. 

The hardliner fundamentalist Taliban regime has shut the doors of high schools and universities to women, trampling on their rights. They are now using the tactics of coercion as a means to threaten the females from entering education institutes' premises, making a U-turn from their previous promises of restoring basic rights after taking control of Kabul in 2021. Visuals emerging from the university in Kandahar in Afghanistan showed women returning to their homes after they were barred from entering the gates. 

“A student tried to commit suicide in front of Nangarhar University but was saved by her friends. One of our reporters found out that the student was very sad,” Niazi shockingly revealed the British newspaper The Independent on Wednesday. 

Afghans protest against university ban for women on social media

Berating the new law that bars women from education in Afghanistan, the Afghan population took to social media to collectively voice their opinion against the regime. Afghans outpoured outrage using the hashtag #LetHerLearn as they slammed the Taliban and their curtailing of women's rights. Many female students grieved that their dreams were shattered and that education was now off-limits to women in 2022. 

“The eighth semester is over and I have just four exams left,” Kabul University student Zamzama Ghazal posted on her Facebook. “God! Don’t take this last hope from me," she further said, using the  #LetHerLearn hashtag that is now transforming into a movement. “We came to the university at 6:30 in the morning, the boys were allowed to enter and they pointed guns at us and told us to go home,” another female student in Afghanistan Tamana Aref tweeted.

“I knew this would happen one day,” wrote Hadia Rahmani on Facebook. “One day even going out on the streets and roads would be forbidden for women until further notice.” Samim Arif, once a deputy spokesman for former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, meanwhile also derided the regime saying that his sister will not be allowed to pursue her engineering degree. 

“My 18 yo sister Wurranga worked extremely hard to make it to engineering school,” he wrote. “Now Taliban banned her from attending school. Her dreams are shattered, our family is devastated.”