Taliban reopened public universities on Saturday, February 26th for the first time since they seized control of the government in August. Ministry of Higher Education said female students will also be allowed to return to their classes but in a double-shift system which means male and female students attend classes at different times.
Female students entered university campuses amid fears and doubts. They said universities may not become their second home again as they used to be before the Taliban’s return to power.
Based on the Taliban’s new policy, female students and lecturers must wear black hijab and no one is allowed to use smartphones or take photos or videos on the campuses. Female students said these restrictions make life difficult for them.
“I do not think I can come here more than a week,” a female student at Fine Arts school, who asked not to be named, said on Kabul University campus. “The university feels so strange to me.”
She said she had to wear black dress, covering her from head to toe, against her will, calling it torture.
“We did not worry about how many people would accept our clothing when we came to university in the past,” she added.
She welcomed the reopening of the universities but expressed fear the Taliban may close Fine Arts school.
Fakhria, 24, a student at Economics school, said she fears the Taliban may close the gates of Universities once again.
“Hijab can be every color, why only black?” she complained about the new hijab policy. “I am against that.”
The new policy also forbids all female students and lecturers from wearing tight dresses and makeup. It encourages women to put on loose clothes.
“We have lost our motivations,” said Fawzia, 22, another female Kabul University student. “I get scared when I see Taliban on campus, I feel I don’t have the freedom I had before.”
The problem is bigger for about 12,000 female students, who lived in the hostels before the Taliban. Begum, 23, a student at Polytechnic Engineering University in Kabul, said her family may not allow her to travel to Kabul from Daikudni anymore.
Another female student at Samangan University in the country’s north, who also spoke in the condition of anonymity, said she was excited to return to her classes, but she got disappointed after what she saw on campus.
“For a moment, I felt they have turned the university into a prison. I felt likes someone was suffocating me,” she said on Samangan University’s campus.
The mood was also grim in Ghazni University where a female university said she feared the quality of the education for women may drop compared to men due to lack of resources for female students.
Female students at Herat University complain that the restrictions are to such an extent that may force them to stop going to university and get education.
“You can’t paint women’s faces, even you can’t paint men’s faces clearly,” said a final year female student at Fine Arts school of Herat University, who asked us not to name her. “I spent four years studying the specific themes of portrait so that I could create unique works in the future and be creative. But I do not know what to paint now.”
Another female student said armed Taliban, who don’t have a specific uniform, enter Herat University and scaring everyone.
Hundreds of University professors have left Afghanistan in the past seven months which have negatively impacted the quality of education in Universities.
