Afghanistan: Taliban ban on girls’ education won’t last, says Malala | taliban news

The armed group that rules Afghanistan closed girls’ high schools just hours after reopening them this week.

The Taliban’s ban on girls’ education will not last forever, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai has said, stressing that Afghan women now know what it is to be “empowered”.

The armed group, which now rules Afghanistan, closed girls’ secondary schools just hours after reopening them this week, prompting a small protest by women and girls in the capital, Kabul.

“I think it was much easier for the Taliban [to enforce] a ban on girls’ education in 1996,” said Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight for the right of all children to education, at the Doha Forum in Qatar on Saturday.

“It’s much harder this time, that’s because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered. This time it is going to be much harder for the Taliban to uphold the ban on girls’ education. This ban will not last forever.”

The Taliban prevented girls from attending school during their rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when it was removed by the US-led invasion.

He returned to power when US forces withdrew in August last year. The United States said on Friday that it had canceled planned talks in Doha with the Taliban after schools closed this week.