Taliban Now Preventing Afghan Women From Leaving the Country on Student Visas

In the two years since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, the state of women’s rights is more horrific than ever. The Taliban has already prohibited women from attending secondary and higher education and is now blocking women from leaving the country on student visas to pursue their education elsewhere.

Despite pretending to care about women’s rights when they first seized power in 2021—including the statement that women would still be allowed to work and study—the Taliban immediately began violating these promises. Only a month into their occupation, the Taliban re-opened the country’s schools but girls were prevented from attending. That same week, the first restriction on women’s employment began, when women working for Kabul’s City Administration were ordered to stay at home (with a few exceptions for jobs that “couldn’t be done by men”). Next, women’s freedom of movement was limited to a distance of 45 miles unless accompanied by a male guardian. Meanwhile, there’s been a steady decrease in jobs and public spaces available to women. In December 2022, all universities within the country were ordered to stop teaching women immediately, not even allowing those close to graduation to take their final exams.

Part of the systemic assault on women’s rights, autonomy, and dignity under Afghanistan’s second Taliban regime, the exclusion of women from secondary and higher education is likely to have dire long-term consequences. This is especially true for Afghan women’s continued access to medical care. The last time the Taliban was in power, women were unable to receive medical care at all unless a close male relative was able to provide it, or they were able to access the one female health center in Kabul. This time around, women haven’t been prohibited from working in healthcare … yet. But while nursing and midwifery courses remain open to female students, medical school is now off-limits, and already qualified women doctors are barred from accessing further training.

Similarly, while a significant number of educated women are retraining as nurses and midwives now in order to re-enter the workforce, girls’ lack of access to secondary education is going to make it increasingly difficult to continue training women to take on these roles as women age out, die, or otherwise leave the profession. Women may still be allowed to receive healthcare from other women, but if the decision to deny them an education isn’t reversed, then Afghanistan is going to run out of professionals who can provide it.

United Arab Emirates billionaire Sheikh Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor responded to the Taliban’s decision to lock women out of higher education by establishing scholarships that would enable them to continue their studies at the University of Dubai. A hundred Afghan women were awarded these scholarships, with at least 60 planning to travel to the UAE on a flight chartered by Al Habtoor from Kabul Airport to begin their studies. However, despite having the requisite visas to travel, every single one of these scholarship students was either removed from the plane or prevented from boarding in the first place by officials from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue.

Though most of the women were attempting to travel without either a husband or a mahram (close male relative) chaperone, something which has been illegal in Afghanistan since December 2021, it’s clear this was not the only reason the group of students were prevented from leaving on their flight. One woman, speaking to the BBC under a pseudonym for safety reasons, said “When the Taliban officials saw our tickets and student visas, they said girls are not allowed to leave Afghanistan on student visas.” Another witness, a man who had accompanied his sister to the airport, confirmed that several of the young women there had brought the requisite male chaperones with them and were still denied transit, while a second woman could be heard on footage taken at the airport saying:

“Right now, we are in the airport but unfortunately the government did not allow us to fly to Dubai … they [Taliban authorities] saw the student visa and the ticket, but did not allow us … some were barred from travelling despite being accompanied by mahram [a male guardian] … I do not know what to do. Please help us. We are so concerned.”

This isn’t the first time Afghan women have been prevented from leaving the country to pursue their education since the Taliban regained control of the country in 2021. Since 2022, women attempting to travel to Iran and Pakistan for educational purposes have been prevented from flying or turned away at the border by Taliban officials. Then, in August 2022, there was a similar incident where 80 former American University of Afghanistan students were prevented from catching their flight to Qatar, where they would finish their studies at other American University campuses.

There are two key differences between these cases and that of the University of Dubai scholarship students. The first is that, according to the information available, all previous incidents involved women traveling without their Taliban-mandated male escort. This time, even women traveling under male supervision were prevented from flying, with officials on the ground openly acknowledging that they were preventing them from studying abroad.

The other difference is the media coverage. Previous incidents received little international notice for a number of reasons, including the assumption that they were part of the wider crackdown on women’s freedom of movement rather than education specifically. But Al Habtoor’s status as a billionaire with political leverage guaranteed that his scholarship program would receive significant media coverage.

The Taliban has yet to issue any statement on the matter, or even acknowledge that it happened. This is now the standard Taliban response when they are called out for their attacks on women’s rights. They attempt to obfuscate what they’ve done in an attempt to avoid international condemnation or the consequences that might result. However, as before, the evidence of what happened last week at Kabul airport is public and undeniable, and as pressure from neighboring countries continues, it remains to be seen how the Taliban will respond.

So far, three of the women who received Al Habtoor’s scholarships have safely made it to Dubai. Whether their safety will be guaranteed when, and if, they return to Afghanistan is unknown.

(via BBC, featured image: Stringer/Getty Images)