Taliban allow high school graduation exams for Afghan girls

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By RAHIM FAIEZ 35 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghan girls will be allowed to take their high school graduation exams this week, an official and documents from the Taliban government indicated Tuesday — even though they have been banned from classrooms since the former insurgents took over the country last year.

According to two documents from the Taliban ministry of education, obtained by The Associated Press, the decision applies to 31 out of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces where the winter school break starts in late December.

Ehsanullah Kitab, head of the Kabul education department, said the exams would take place on Wednesday. He provided no other details and it was not clear how many teenage girls would be able to take the exam.

One of the documents, from the Kabul education department, said the exams would last from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. A second document, signed by Habibullah Agha, the education minister who took office in September, said the tests would be held in 31 Afghan provinces. The three excluded provinces — Kandahar, Helmand and Nimroz — have a different timetable for the school year and high school graduation exams typically take place there later.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-religion-education-graduation-de4ef0913bed3034919f98a1cdf5e5b1?utm_source=Connatix&utm_medium=HomePage

[Lonestarblue]

1. How horrifying for these girls to now be under the control of the hateful Taliban.

They can take their exams and then will have no use for a diploma. They will be expected to stay in their homes out of public sight until their fathers sell them to the highest bidder when they become nothing more than incubators for babies. A version of that is what the Christian right wants for US women.

[ananda]

3. That's the way Texas is trying to go...

and some other states.

They're getting there too.

[EX500rider]

5. Really?

There's a movement in Texas to make women & girls where burkas and not got to school? Feel free to link to that.

[XorXor]

9. I think that downplays the horrors that these girls and women are going through out there

No doubt there are some backward people in Texas trying to push some nonsense religious agenda, but it's still a far cry from what's happening in Afghanistan now. I suspect it would take a few generations of complete Christian theocracy without any secular influence to take hold before we'd ever see anything close what they have over there. Barring a total collapse of the society, I don't think that will be happening.

But that doesn't mean that the religious nuts over here should be ignored, or that they are not a threat to our country. In fact, they are more of a threat to us than the Taliban, because the Taliban doesn't have the ability to make laws here.

[electric_blue68]

11. Oh, it IS totally infuriating. As is what has happened here in certain States, and what the worst of

what RW'rs wish, and plan for!

[sarisataka]

2. Ah, the kinder gentler Taliban

That so many sung the praises of...

[PlanetBev]

6. Love the quote on the bottom of the page from the Twilight Zone

“Death’s Head Revisited” was a very memorable episode. Loved the mind of the great Rod Serling.

[sarisataka]

8. Rod was a genius, IMHO

His quote ending the episode is at least as relevant now, sixty years later, as it was then. Possibly moreso.

[XorXor]

10. Wishful thinking which I also fell for.

I mean, I had my doubt it would happen, but I had some hope that maybe the moderate voices would take hold. I suppose there is some improvement (girls graduating, I guess?), but at this point I have little hope in that continuing, let alone improving.

[pandr32]

4. They have been locked out of class for 1 1/2 years

...with no instruction.

[PlanetBev]

7. Big Whoop

When everyday of your life you are consigned to wearing a hefty garbage bag over your head.

[scarletlib]

12. Those outfits they are forced to wear literally erase them as living, feeling human beings.

It turns them into objects.