Taliban minister 'flees' country as issue of girls' education divides leadership A senior Taliban minister, who publicly condemned the group’s ban on education of girls and women, has reportedly fled Afghanistan amid fears of arrest.
Last week, the Taliban’s deputy minister of interior Mohammad Nabi Omari was seen breaking down and reduced to tears in a public gathering in the same province of Khost as he spoke about the group’s strict ban on education affecting girls and women.
This is not the first time the senior Taliban leader, viewed as moderate within the Taliban ranks, called for restoring the education of Afghan girls and women.
Sher Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s political deputy at the foreign ministry, had called on other leaders to open schools for girls and women in January and said the edict forbidding them from schools was not in line with Sharia law as the hardline rulers claimed.
In September 2022, a year after the Taliban took control of Kabul, Mr Stanikzai had said that no one has a religious reason which can justify depriving girls of education, calling schools and colleges obligatory for both genders.
