KABUL: The Taliban are prepared to drop their ban on girls' schools, an influential Afghan cabinet minister says.The Education Minister, Farooq Wardak, says the movement has decided to scrap the ban on female education that helped earn it worldwide infamy in the 1990s.
Just about ready to join the 17th century? Nosebleed speed!
Mr Wardak said the Taliban's leadership had undergone a profound change since losing power after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
| Being chased all the way to the next country in no time flat by a handful of infidels on horseback, then shot by unreachable toy airplanes while in a safe house in the bosom of one's family... it makes a man think, y'know? |
| Whew! Nothing like smearing it on thick. Do you believe him? I do, but then, I'm gullible. |
The minister, one of the most trusted members of the inner circle of the President, Hamid Karzai, has a central role in official efforts to bring the Taliban to peace talks.
Taliban spokesmen were unavailable for comment, and the Taliban have never made any public statements that back up Mr Wardak's claim.
So it's all propaganda until they can take over again, at which time the little girls will be shut in their families homes until they can be married off. At the age of seven.
The Taliban insurgency has killed teachers in schools that have mixed classes.
A rather better indicator of their true beliefs...
| They've killed teachers in schools that have unmixed classes, too. And blown up a great many schools: girls', boys', and mixed. It's one of those foolish consistency of small minds thingies. |
''It will all come up in any potential negotiations and this is one 'concession' they could make to the foreigners,'' he said.
| Ooooh, a hudna! |
What's ambivalent about killing little girls and burning down their schools?
| You, my dear, are ignoring nuance and subtlety. So are they, but that's something else altogether. |
"We'll give the ban about a hundred years. After all, we've done without edumacating our wimmin folk ever since Mo' jumped the rock in Jerusalem!"
| The sad thing is, in the early days of Islam women were involved and educated. Mohammed's first wife was an independent and successful businesswoman, his last wife Aisha led men in the field, until about 1,000 AD women were poets and teachers and fully involved in public life. Then something happened, and they weren't anymore. |
Except that they blow up girl-only schools...
Amir Mansory, an education expert at the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, which has supported schools in the country for decades, said 33,000 girls continued to go to school in the late 1990s, despite the official ban.
''It was a sort of hidden policy,'' Mr Mansory said. ''No one said girls could go to school, but in the provinces Taliban officials would approach me asking for the Swedish Committee's help in supporting girls' schools.''
And while insurgents have closed down many schools around the country in recent years, Mr Mansory said they have been actively supported in some Taliban-controlled areas, including in Paktika and Wardak provinces.
They need something to blow up?
| Madrassahs, perhaps. For boys only. That's where they make more little jihadis. |
Taliban leaders have rethought many of their
What is it with Australian news sources and their use of double-single quotes? Can't they tell that it looks funny?