Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Flees Afghanistan After Advocating for Girls' Education

New Delhi: In what perhaps could be termed a major development in Afghanistan a senior minister of the Taliban has had to leave the country, says a report. It should be noted that current deputy foreign minister of the Taliban Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai has never been unwilling for maintaining and even increasing the ban on education for girls in Afghanistan.

In an interview with The Guardian, on 20 January 2015 in Khost province on the Afghan-Pakistan border Stanikzai said that he opposes the government decision to stop girls from attending secondary schools and higher education. “There can be no justification for this – not today and not tomorrow,” The Guardian quoted Stanikzai. Adding more to his statement he continued to say, “We are being unjust to 20 million people.”

Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai has spoken to the legistlators stating that the doors of knowledge during the time of the prophet Muhammad were open for both men and women. He said it was filled with such remarkable women that if he began to enumerate them, it would take a lot of his time : “There were such remarkable women that if I were to elaborate on their contributions, it would take a considerable amount of time.”

After his speech and the reports of his criticism, the Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada gave an order to arrest the minister and put him on a travel ban. This made Stanikzai escape from Afghanistan to the united Arab emirates, as referred to in the Guardian.

What did Stanikzai say?
Asked by the local television and other media about the recent reports that he had traveled to Dubai, Stanikzai said yes that was true but it was basically for medical purposes.

To briefly refresh the memories of the readers, educational, working, traveling, and being out in public have all been curtailed for women and girls since August last year when Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.

In the previous month, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court prompted the arrest warrants for the supreme leader of the Taliban and Afghanistan’s chief justice for persecuting women and girls in Afghanistan as violating human rights.