KABUL: Afghanistan’s schools reopened Tuesday for the new academic year, but no classes were held as students were unaware of the start and hundreds of thousands of teenage girls remain barred from attending class.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to secondary school.
Taliban authorities have imposed an austere interpretation of Islam since storming to power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of the US-led foreign forces that backed the previous governments.
The education ministry made no public announcement of the reopening of schools, several teachers and officials said.
“A letter issued by the minister of education was given to us by our principal to reopen the school today, but since no public announcement was made, no students came,” said Mohammad Osman Atayi, a teacher at the Saidal Naseri Boys High School in Kabul.
AFP journalists toured seven schools in Kabul and saw only a few teachers and primary students arriving — but no classes were held.
Schools also reopened in provinces including Herat, Kunduz, Ghazni and Badakhshan but no lessons were held there either, AFP correspondents reported.
Tuesday’s start of the new academic year coincided with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, celebrated widely in Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power but now unacknowledged by the country’s new rulers.
Hundreds of thousands of teenage girls meanwhile remain barred from secondary school.
“The Taliban have snatched everything away from us,” said 15-year-old Sadaf Haidari, a resident of Kabul who should have started grade 11 this year.
“I am depressed and broken.”
The ban on girls’ secondary education came into effect in March last year, just hours after the education ministry reopened schools for both girls and boys.
Taliban leaders — who have also banned women from university education — have repeatedly claimed they will reopen secondary schools for girls once “conditions” have been met, from obtaining funding to remodeling the syllabus along Islamic lines.
The international community has made the right to education for women a key condition in negotiations over aid and recognition of the Taliban government.
No country has officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.
Afghanistan under the Taliban government is the “most repressive country in the world” for women’s rights, the United Nations has said.
Women have been effectively squeezed out of public life — removed from most government jobs or are paid a fraction of their former salary to stay at home.
They are also barred from going to parks, fairs, gyms and public baths, and must cover up in public.
Afghanistan school year starts but no classes held
https://arab.news/46ef6
Afghanistan school year starts but no classes held
- Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to secondary school
- The education ministry made no public announcement of the reopening of schools
Venezuela’s acting president calls for oil industry reforms to attract more foreign investment
- In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects
CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez used her first state of the union address on Thursday to promote oil industry reforms that would attract foreign investment, an objective aggressively pushed by the Trump administration since it toppled the country’s longtime leader less than two weeks ago.
Rodríguez, who has been under pressure from the US to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation, said sales of Venezuelan oil would go to bolster crisis-stricken health services, economic development and other infrastructure projects.
While she sharply criticized the Trump administration and said there was a “stain on our relations,” the former vice president also outlined a distinct vision for the future between the two historic adversaries, straying from her predecessors, who have long railed against American intervention in Venezuela.
“Let us not be afraid of diplomacy” with the US, said Rodriguez, who must now navigate competing pressures from the Trump administration and a government loyal to former President Nicolás Maduro.
The speech, which was broadcast on a delay in Venezuela, came one day after Rodríguez said her government would continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro in what she described as “a new political moment” since his ouster.
Trump on Thursday met at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. But in endorsing Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, Trump has sidelined Machado.
In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects.
Hospitals and other health care facilities across the country have long suffered. Patients are asked to provide practically all supplies needed for their care, from syringes to surgical screws. Economic turmoil, among other factors, has pushed millions of Venezuelans to migrate from the South American nation in recent years.
In moving forward, the acting president must walk a tightrope, balancing pressures from both Washington and top Venezuelan officials who hold sway over Venezuela’s security forces and strongly oppose the US Her recent public speeches reflect those tensions — vacillating from conciliatory calls for cooperation with the US, to defiant rants echoing the anti-imperialist rhetoric of her toppled predecessor.
American authorities have long railed against a government they describe as a “dictatorship,” while Venezuela’s government has built a powerful populist ethos sharply opposed to US meddling in its affairs.
For the foreseeable future, Rodríguez’s government has been effectively relieved of having to hold elections. That’s because when Venezuela’s high court granted Rodríguez presidential powers on an acting basis, it cited a provision of the constitution that allows the vice president to take over for a renewable period of 90 days.
Trump enlisted Rodríguez to help secure US control over Venezuela’s oil sales despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term. To ensure she does his bidding, Trump threatened Rodríguez earlier this month with a “situation probably worse than Maduro.”
Maduro, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail, has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges.
Before Rodríguez’s speech on Thursday, a group of government supporters was allowed into the presidential palace, where they chanted for Maduro, who the government insists remains the country’s president. “Maduro, resist, the people are rising,” they shouted.
