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Women march near the former Women’s Affairs Ministry building in Kabul yesterday as the Taliban enjoy on lake ride, (pix above)
Armed Taliban fighters were spotted riding swan-themed pedalos on the water at Band-e Amir National Park – once a hotspot for international travellers and domestic tourists – in central Afghanistan yesterday.
The park contains a series of six deep blue lakes situated in the Hindu Kush mountains, roughly 45 miles from Bamiyan – formerly the home of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, which the Taliban destroyed in 2001.
Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers, who set up a ministry for the ‘propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice’ in the building that once housed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, are now facing protests over the treatment of women and girls, just one month after overtaking the country’s capital Kabul.
On Saturday the Taliban excluded girls from returning to secondary school in but ordered boys and male teachers back to the classroom, again breaking their promise to bring about a less severe brand of rule than their 1990s predecessors. During their previous rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban had denied girls and women the right to education and barred them from public life. A statement from the education ministry last Friday demanded: ‘All male teachers and students should attend their educational institutions.’ It made no mention of female teachers or pupils. Some Afghan women are now protesting the return to repression, with boys also refusing to attend class in solidarity. One boy was pictured in a Twitter post holding a sign that says: ‘We don’t go to school without our sisters’. UK Daily Mail
