Taliban Deploys Heavy Military Equipment at Islam Qala Border With Iran

The letter contains seven points as orders to be followed in research and translation and has been signed by Hamidullah Muzammil, the director of research and translation of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban.

A reliable source from the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education confirmed the authenticity of the letter.

The letter orders professors to defend the current Taliban regime and avoid any kind of criticism in their writings so as to not face any consequences.

The letter explicitly asked that the professors to avoid using Persian terms for “court, prosecutor, student, university, and faculty,” in their research work. The Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban has said that the country has "national terms" for these words and those terms must be used.

Banning Persian terms, particularly for universities in different cities of Afghanistan, has caused many reactions inside Afghan universities and the media. The Taliban’s government agencies have labeled these Persian terms as “foreign” and prevented their use by Persian speakers of Afghanistan. It is while the officials of the previous Afghan government and the Taliban are not sensitive towards terms from Urdu and English languages used across the country.

Earlier, the Taliban had removed Persian words from plaques of government agencies across Afghanistan.

The letter, too, has stated that the university professors need to learn Pashto and Dari as the two official languages of Afghanistan. The letter emphasised that "each professor must be able to read, write, speak and teach both official languages."

The letter also ordered university professors to write with “full respect” the names of national figures including “Sayed Jamaluddin Afghan”; “Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi”, “and “Ahmad Shah Baba.” The Taliban have threatened that failure to comply with these orders will result in the prosecution of "the author, researcher, translator, supervisor” and other university officials, including the university chancellor.

The letter from the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education stressed that the authors of academic papers must quote Islamic views in their writings and that failure to comply with these orders will have severe consequences.

On Wednesday, the former chief peace negotiator emphasised that the tension between the Islamic Republic and the Taliban should be resolved through dialogue. According to him, "Afghans need peace, not the interference of others."

Over the past few weeks, tension between Iran and the Taliban escalated on the water rights issue from the Helmand River, and on Saturday, border guards of both the sides clashed in Nimroz province.

A Taliban fighter and a border guard of Iran had been killed in the border skirmish.

This newspaper, in addition to praising Ahmad Massoud, has described the threatening and mocking words about the Islamic Republic by figures close to the Taliban as "naive chanting by some people affiliated with this group".

This newspaper pointed to the threats and wrote, “Let them know that we have buried people more brutal than them, that was bloodthirsty- ISIS. They [Taliban] count as nothing.”

Although the Iranian authorities are trying to downplay the recent border tensions in order to reduce the tensions with the Taliban, domestic newspapers, especially the press close to the Iranian regime, have harshly criticised the Taliban's dealings with Iran.

Jomhouri-e Eslami Newspaper, criticising the Iranian government's policy towards the Taliban, called the recent tweet of Ahmed Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, as "sympathetic and wise”.

When the Iranian and Taliban border clash occurred on Saturday, Ahmad Massoud, quoted a poem of Rumi, and said he considered Iran's foreign policy to establish friendly relations with the Taliban as futile.

Like other domestic newspaper, Jomhouri-e Eslami also called the policy of close relationship with the Taliban as a mistake, including the handover of Afghanistan embassy to the group.

Masih Mohajeri, editor of this newspaper, is described as one of the conservative scholars of Iran.

This senior military commander called the clashes with Taliban border forces “worthless”.

Hajizadeh, in a speech at the University of Science and Technology of Tehran, said, “Our enemies want to transform the border clash with Afghanistan into a war; the case will be managed. Nothing to worry.”

He added, “Some incidents happened at the border that are not very important. They are managed in the area of the border and by the forces there, and we should not stir up these issues.”

Controversy over Iran’s water rights has raised political tension between the Taliban and Iranian government. The border clash between Iranian and Taliban border guards intensified the tensions. Now, the Iranian and Taliban officials are trying to lower the tensions through a conciliatory tone.

Though this Iranian official trivialised the border clash, but he claimed that the US is behind it.

He pointed to the death of nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif of Balkh province in 1998, which caused the gathering of tens of thousands of Iranian military forces on the border with Afghanistan and said that Ali Khamenei, the religious leader of Iran, prevented the clash with Taliban back then.

According to the Khabaronline website, Hajizadeh said, “US has prepared different traps for Iran over the years. For example, during the Iraq-Kuwait war... in Afghanistan, during the Bush, when our diplomats were martyred in Afghanistan, inside some tried to carry out an operation, which the leader of the revolution stopped and said that the war is not in our favour.”

Regarding the border clash, Tasnim Agency which is affiliated to IRGC, claimed that a security source said that the reason behind the starting of the clash had been the skirmish between Iranian border guards and drug traffickers.

This source said that Taliban were unaware of the matter and opened fire on Iranian forces which caused the clash between the two sides.

Last year, the Taliban had announced that they will build three to 10 religious madrassas in every district.

In this statement, Abdul Jalil Shahidkhil, Taliban’s head of education directorate in Balkh, said that after the takeover of the Taliban, the officials of this group and businessmen have tried to take practical steps towards the construction of religious schools.

After the takeover of power by Taliban in August 2021, the group has started to establish religious madrassas all over Afghanistan.

Taliban named some of these madrassas as “Jihadi Madrassas” wherein in addition to religious studies, military training is also being taught.

Some criticised that Taliban is not only expanding extremism through these madrassas, but also changing them into their militias’ training centers.