United States Must Support Anti-Taliban Resistance, Says Former NSA

Earlier on Saturday, the embassy had announced the release of more than 500 people from Pakistani prisons.

Taliban officials in Islamabad have said that these people have been released from the Pakistani prison as a result of their efforts.

At the end of 2022, the Pakistani police increased their strict procedures against Afghan immigrants in the country and imprisoned many of them.

“Without our female colleagues, we cannot and will not work as we cannot provide services to the women of Afghanistan,” he added.

Egeland added that he had spoken to the Taliban officials and emphasised that this is a real impasse as humanitarian aid has been stopped for millions of Afghans even as dropping temperatures and bad weather conditions plague the nation.

The Secretary General of the NRC stressed that they will restart their aid operations, only when they gain unimpeded access for both their female and male staff members to reach all the affected population in need.

Egeland has highlighted how a continued Taliban ban on female NGO staff in Afghanistan can have devastating consequences on six million people who may fall into famine; it will leave 600,000 children without education; 13.5 million people without safe water supply and 14.1 million people with no protection services.

Habibullah Agha added that female teachers of educational centers supported by international organisations can return to their jobs with proper Hijab.

In a letter issued on Sunday, the Taliban’s minister of education letter said that secondary and high schools above grade six will remain closed to Afghan girls until further notice.

This is despite the fact that in some provinces, local authorities have closed schools below grade 6 for female students.

After banning women from work, UN-supported educational centers in Kandahar and other provinces have stopped operations.

The UN supports nearly 1,600 educational classes in Kandahar alone, and about 50,000 boys and girls had been educated there, while the majority of teachers in these educational centers had been Afghan women.

In the meeting, Egeland urged the Taliban to allow women’s work in Afghanistan.

The NRC Secretary General added that the organisation has helped 850,000 Afghan citizens in the past six months and plans to support another 700,000 people in the future.

However, the Taliban's minister of refugees, said, "One or two kilos of aid will not solve the problem of Afghans."

Egeland had previously announced that without male and female employees, NRC cannot resume its activities in Afghanistan.

Bakhtar, the Taliban-controlled news agency, reported the details of the meeting of the UN envoy and the Taliban’s minister of higher education which took place on Saturday.

Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban officials have always described the ban on women's education as a "temporary" issue, but they have imposed more restrictions on girls and women over the past months.

The group never allowed women and girls education during their reign in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The Taliban’s current minister of education is one of the most vocal critics of working women and women’s education among the group’s top leadership. He had previously made harsh and insulting comments about women's work, education, and sports in the previous government.