Girls’ Education Disputed Issue & Must Not Be Magnified, Says Taliban’s Interior Minister

Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's interior minister, admitted that allowing girls and female students to attend schools and universities is a "controversial issue" among the Taliban.

During his visit to Herat province, Haqqani stressed that in order to resolve the issue and prevent its escalation, the Taliban "needs time”.

The Taliban’s interior minister added that the group’s leaders look for reasonable solutions to address these differences.

Senior Taliban officials including the group’s defence minister Mullah Yaqoob, interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, intelligence chief, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the group's head of supreme court, travelled to Herat on Monday.

Haqqani is one of the Taliban officials who had previously emphasised that there will be a quick solution to the issue of depriving Afghan girls and women of the right to education.

However, while it has now been almost two years since the ban on girls' education, Haqqani still emphasises on the temporary nature of the Taliban’s decision.

The Taliban has been against the right to work and education of Afghan girls and women since the group’s reign in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. In the past three decades, the group’s mentality and policies about women have not changed.