Troy L. Milliron 
Upon its return to power, however, the fundamentalist group said girls and women would be able to continue their education, saying it would start when the new school year came on March 23. Although public universities had started to reopen before that, most had not allowed women to attend.
Thus, March 23 was to be a memorable day. But the night before, permission for girls and women to resume their studies was abruptly revoked. Careful observers see it as a victory for the hardline rural faction of the Taliban over the more pragmatic members of the government. During this time, a New York Times investigation documented the revenge killings or disappearances of nearly 500 Afghans who served in the former government or were once members of the country’s security forces.
If the education policy reversal continues, it will mark a huge step backwards for Afghanistan, making it the only country in the world that denies education based explicitly on gender, said Heather Barr, Deputy Director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.
This development also underscores a frustrating reality for the United States: without a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, we no longer have an effective way to pressure the Taliban, notes Pierre Galbraith, who in 2009 served as the United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan. We also don’t have good relations with Pakistan or China, the two most influential nations with the Taliban.
This means that other entities will be more effective in taking the lead here. One is the European Union. His business ties to Pakistan give him considerable leverage to push that country to pressure its neighbor to restore girls’ education, says Sher Jan Ahmadzaia former collaborator of the former Afghan president Hamid Karzai who is now executive director of the University of Nebraska Afghanistan Studies Center.
In September, Imran Khan, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, affirmed that preventing Afghan girls and women from continuing their education would be un-Islamic. The Pakistani government has since changed, but this message should be repeated loud and clear and regularly.
International reporters also have an important role to play, as the Taliban grants them greater access and leeway than the local press, Ahmadzai said. In their reporting, they must make it clear that most Afghan citizens want their daughters to have full access to education.
“International journalists,” he said, should “reflect what the Afghan people want and show it to the Taliban: it’s your own people, who you’re supposed to serve.”
The Taliban’s desire to be recognized and respected by the global community provides the West with an opportunity to send a unified message that no progress will be made on this front until this decision is reversed.
“There can’t even be the idea of having a discussion about recognizing [the Taliban] as legitimate leaders until they start behaving like that, and a baseline is the rights of women and girls,” said Dyan Mazuranateacher-researcher at Fletcher School at Tufts University who has years of experience in Afghanistan.
Mazurana said the international community should also try to identify and elevate the Taliban who support full schooling for girls. This can be done in part by inviting them, rather than Taliban hardliners, to meetings like the ones being held end of January in Norway between a Taliban delegation and representatives of the European Union, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and the United States.
Foreign or international aid to Afghanistan, even humanitarian aid, should be tailored to promote the rights of girls and women and discourage discrimination, added Barr of Human Rights Watch.
“We say donors should not fund secondary education in provinces where girls’ secondary schools are closed,” she said via Skype from Pakistan. Foreign governments must also speak out on the detention of Afghans who defend human rights, she added.
Relevant institutions or individuals could offer full scholarships, with living allowances, to young Afghan women, Tufts’ Mazurana said. With this in hand, they could obtain visas to study abroad; the Taliban currently allows such travel through Pakistan, she said.
“It could be government funded, it could be private initiatives, it could be university initiatives, it could be foundation initiatives,” she said. “Anyone can give a girl a scholarship to go to school.”
These are obviously not first-rate tools or levers of efficiency. But applied with determination and continuously, they could have an effect. We have to try. The world cannot break away from the girls and women of Afghanistan.
Editorials represent the opinions of the Editorial Board of The Boston Globe. Follow us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.
