Several female students of Balkh University say that, wanting to return home after the end of academic year, the Taliban prevented them from travelling, including going home. The Taliban offer the reason that the female students do not have a male mahram to accompany them.
According to these students, the Taliban stopped them as they tried to leave for home and returned them to their dormitory.
Laila* is one of the students prevented from leaving by the Taliban. She is a third-year student at Balkh University whose family lives in Kabul. “After final examinations, I and 11 girls from Kabul and Daikundi provinces left the dormitory to go home, but at the exit gate, the Taliban asked us about our mahram. We said we don’t have mahram and we are students. They sent us back again,” she tells Zan Times
She says that the Taliban beat a local driver for providing rides to female university students travelling without mahram.
The student added that her father, a poor labourer, is the sole breadwinner of the family and is unable to afford the extra cost of travelling from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif to then accompany her home.
Laila says that she saves 100 afghanis from her monthly spending money so that she could afford to return home when the university closes.
Mozhgan*, another student at Balkh University, confirms what occurred to Zan Times. “When the Taliban sent us back to the dormitory, we were very scared,” she says.
Mozhgan adds that she and three other girls from Daikundi province came to Balkh to continue their education. Before the Taliban regained power, they used to travel to Kabul without any problems.
Now, she and the other female students have waited for four days in order for family members to come to Balkh province in order that they be allowed to return home.
It was in December 2021 that the Taliban banned women from travelling without a male chaperone. Although the Taliban had stated that this travel ban was for trips of more than 72 kilometres, this ban is now being enforced on much shorter routes, which has even prevented women from accessing healthcare or going to clinics.
The Taliban are also preventing female students from travelling abroad. Last week, the Taliban prevented19 female students from travelling from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. They were third-year university students in Uzbekistan who had come to Afghanistan for a vacation. But, when they wanted to return, the Taliban forbade them from crossing the border because they did not have a male companion.
This new travel rule imposed at Balkh University is the latest restriction aimed at female university students in Afghanistan. Recently, the Taliban moved at least 13 programs from the girls’ selection form at Kandahar University, according to a source who spoke to Zan Times under the condition of anonymity. The source explains that “13 fields have been eliminated, including law and political science, computer science, journalism, public administration, engineering, economics, mining exploration, and agriculture, leaving girls with only medicine, education, and sharia.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.
