Ban On Women’s Medical Education Endangers Afghanistan's Healthcare System, Says UNICEF

According to sources, the Taliban's intelligence agency is still seeking to arrest protesting students in Takhar.

The Taliban’s intelligence agency entered the Takhar Institute on Thursday and detained a number of girls, sources said.

A source said that the Taliban arrested three female students and released them after a few hours.

The Taliban's intelligence agency has warned students to refrain from any protest and to stop publishing pictures and videos of their protests.

One student said that the Taliban’s intelligence agency officials told them that protesting "harms the honour and dignity of women".

Over the past two days, a number of female students of medical institutes in Takhar and a number of provinces have protested against the closure of these educational centres by the Taliban.

One of the protesting girls in Takhar told Afghanistan International, "Today, the lives of all female students are in danger." She said that the Taliban’s intelligence agency is searching every lane to arrest these protesting students. Regarding the reason for the girls' arrest, she said, "We raised our voices yesterday, but today two of our colleagues were arrested by the Taliban's intelligence agency."

With these changes, it seems that Hibatullah is trying to expand and consolidate his influence.

One-third of these appointments have been made in Afghanistan's southern provinces. Hibatullah has appointed and replaced dozens of people, including ministers, deputies, and commanders of the Taliban's army.

To expand his influence, the Taliban leader has transferred many people from lower positions to ministries, deputies, provinces and top military officials, sources told Afghanistan International.

At the same time, Hibatullah Akhundzada has transferred many Taliban officials in the southern provinces from high positions to lower positions in order to eliminate internal divisions and bring people under his influence and control.

Many of these appointments are made not on the basis of background and work experience, but on the basis of relationships with the Taliban leader.

According to sources, during January of this year, Hibatullah changed and replaced 28 people in the Ministry of Defence.

In February, there were 12 appointments in various departments under the group's control. Similarly, in May this year, 15 more appointments were made in the group's government institutions.

As a result, Hibatullah Akhundzadeh appointed Noor Jalal Jalali as the group's public health minister instead of Qalandar Ebad. He was previously the Taliban's deputy interior minister.

Mohammad Sadiq Inqilabi, the district governor of Gereshk, Helmand, was appointed as the deputy governor of Kandahar and Hayatullah Mubarak, the deputy governor of Kandahar, was appointed as the district governor of Gereshk.

The change of ministers in Hibatullah's cabinet in June and July was met with backlash among the group's supporters. On social media, Taliban supporters criticised their leader for not respecting professional norms and fairness in appointments.

In June, he appointed Mohammad Wazir, the budget chief of the Ministry of Interior, as the head of the Ghazni Disaster Department, and in July, Hedayatullah Badri was removed as the head of Da Afghanistan Bank and appointed as the Minister of Mines and Petroleum.

In July, the Taliban leader also made changes to the Taliban's Ministry of Defence, in which many people from the southern provinces were given senior positions.

Abdullah Bashir, the district governor of Boldak, Kandahar, was appointed as the deputy minister of technology and logistics at the Ministry of Defence.

In recent months, the Taliban leader has made these series of changes in some other institutions as well. He has appointed people he trusts in provinces, ministries and important institutions.

Hibatullah also moved the office of Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid to Kandahar. For some time, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban's foreign minister, has also opened an office in Kandahar and meets with officials from foreign institutions there.

The source said that in addition to appointing trusted people to senior positions, the Taliban leader has also created a special force of several thousand people.

According to sources, Hibatullah's special force is not affiliated with the ministries of interior and defence and receives millions of Afghanis in funding monthly for salaries and other expenses.

The newspaper quoted a Taliban official as saying that Yue Xiaoyong had proposed a trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers of the Taliban, Pakistan and China in Beijing.

Pakistani and Taliban officials told Hum News that following the visits of the Chinese special envoy to Kabul and Islamabad, Beijing is trying to reduce tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban government.

According to the newspaper, the dispute between the Taliban and Pakistan over armed groups opposed to Pakistan, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has caused relations between the two sides to fall to the lowest level.

A Taliban official told the newspaper that the focus of the Chinese special envoy's meetings with senior Taliban and Pakistani officials shows China's concern about the tensions between the Taliban and Islamabad. According to the Taliban official, China's special envoy came up with the idea of holding a meeting of the foreign ministers of this group, Pakistan and China in Beijing.

The official said that China had previously proposed to hold a trilateral meeting in Ashgabat on the sidelines of the meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan's neighbouring countries, but the meeting was postponed.

Mushahid Hussain, head of the Pakistan-China Institute, told the newspaper that China actively sees the trilateral meeting between Pakistan, the Taliban and China as a bridge to normalise relations between Islamabad and Kabul.

"China has a tripartite strategy towards Afghanistan, which for the first time in 40 years, differs from Pakistan's policy in Afghanistan, which is a flawed and failed policy," Mushahid said.

"Beijing now has more influence in Kabul than Islamabad," the Pakistani expert added.

After accepting the Taliban's representative earlier this year, China is pursuing a three-pronged approach of engagement, reconstruction and peace through a counter-terrorism strategy to curb terrorist groups operating inside Afghanistan, he said.

Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Pakistan's former ambassador to Afghanistan, also said that the growing rift between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban is widespread and has now reached a point where it has affected Pakistan's relations with China.

"The border conflict and the lack of interaction between Afghanistan (the Taliban) and Pakistan on cross-border issues undermine the prospects for lasting peace and stability, while hindering China's efforts to expand its economic influence in Afghanistan and the region," the former Pakistani diplomat in Kabul said.

Better relations between the Taliban and Pakistan are of vital importance to China's interests, he said.

Pakistan, which has been accused of supporting the armed opposition in Kabul during the Taliban's 20 wars against the Afghan government and international forces, hoped that attacks by militant groups in the country would decrease as the Taliban came to power.

Islamabad, in particular, had counted on the Afghan Taliban's cooperation in containing the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is considered an ally of the group. But over the past three years, not only has the Taliban not prevented TTP attacks in Pakistan, but senior Pakistani officials have accused the Taliban of harbouring TTP members and in some cases supporting the group to launch attacks inside Pakistan.

The Taliban in Kabul has always denied the allegations.

During his visit to China, he called for the country's cooperation with the Taliban in the field of "traditional medicine”.

Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada on Monday banned girls' education in medical institutes. Taliban officials have not provided any explanation for the move.

In the past three years, the Taliban has banned girls from studying above the sixth grade and attending universities.

The closure of medical institutions for girls has been met with sharp criticism from international organisations, and the Taliban has been asked to immediately lift the restrictions.

The European Union has warned that banning women's education in medical institutes is a "terrible violation" of human rights.

Coinciding with these restrictions, the Taliban's Ministry of Public Health announced on Wednesday, December 4, that Noor Jalal Jalali had traveled to China and delivered a speech at the International Conference on Traditional Medicine.

The Taliban's health minister said, "In Afghanistan, traditional medicine should be standardised and include a modern medicine section, and a standard curriculum should be prepared for those interested in it."

The statement said that the Department of Traditional Medicine has also been established in the organisation of the Taliban's Ministry of Public Health.

According to the statement, the department "works on improving and reforming the work of doctors, policies and guidelines in the department”.

According to estimates by the World Food Programme (WFP) and Save the Children, Afghan children will suffer from poor conditions for survival in the next three months.

"Hunger in Afghanistan is getting worse in the winter, and the WFP predicts that nearly 15 million people, or nearly a third of the Afghan population, will need food assistance to survive," WFP spokesperson Philippe Kropf told the British publication The Independent.

Another 570,000 Afghan children are expected to be malnourished next year, compared to this year.

Philippe Kropf said that in 2025, a total of 3.45 million children are likely to be malnourished.

According to another assessment conducted by Save the Children, more than half of Afghanistan's population, about 24 million people, will be in dire need of humanitarian assistance such as cash and food to avoid poverty and food insecurity in the coming months.

"As winter approaches, families in some parts of Afghanistan are forced to make painful choices about what to prioritise: food, heating the house or warm clothes for children," said Arshad Malik, Country Director (Afghanistan) at Save the Children

Malik said that nearly 6.5 million children, or 30 percent, are facing crisis or emergency levels of hunger. "One of the children told us he had no warm clothes – until they were provided by Save the Children," he told The Independent.

The World Food Programme (WFP) needs $787 million across all of its programmes over the next six months to ensure that vulnerable families in Afghanistan are safe from the risk of hunger and poverty, according to the figures provided.

As food prices rise during the winter, millions of Afghans, especially children, will face a shortage of nutritious food and thus, the risk of acute malnutrition, according to aid agencies.

The problem is exacerbated by the Taliban's lack of an efficient economy, blocked roads by snowfall, and cut off communication routes to remote areas.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the country needs at least $1 billion in aid to enable vulnerable Afghans to get through this winter.

However, according to Save the Children's data, the international community has yet to meet the needs of humanitarian funding.

Meanwhile, the Taliban government has not taken any steps to deal with the challenges in the winter season.