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Why a top Taliban leader’s quiet exit to UAE is fuelling internal rift rumours

Feb 05, 2025 05:06 PM IST

In September 2022, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai created a flutter by calling on the Taliban to reopen secondary schools to girls during a televised speech.

The Taliban’s acting deputy foreign minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, has left Afghanistan weeks after criticising top leaders over restrictions on women, giving rise to speculation about divisions within the group.

Afghanistan's acting deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai in Kabul on January 20, 2025. (AFP Photo) PREMIUM
Afghanistan's acting deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai in Kabul on January 20, 2025. (AFP Photo)

This is not the first time that Stanekzai, the former deputy head of Taliban’s political office in Qatar who trained for several years at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in the early 1980s, has tangled with the group’s senior leadership over the handling of issues such as the education of girls and women’s rights.

Officially, Stanekzai said in an audio statement last week that he had travelled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to rest and recuperate as he had been “infected with a coronavirus-like disease”. Stanekzai also accused the media of spreading “false propaganda” about his travels.

However, several reports in Afghan media outlets based outside Afghanistan have said Stanekzai left the country soon after Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada ordered his arrest and imposed a travel ban days after he criticised the ban on girls attending secondary schools and higher educational institutions.

Addressing a graduation ceremony in Khost province on January 20, Stanekzai called for girls to be allowed to return to school and said restrictions on the education of girls and women were not in keeping with Shariah law. “We request the leaders of the Islamic Emirate to open the doors of education,” he said. “There is no excuse for this – not now and not in the future.”

Referring to the female population of Afghanistan, Stanekzai added: “In the time of the Prophet Mohammed, the doors of knowledge were open to both men and women...Today, out of a population of 40 million, we are committing injustice against 20 million people.”

Stanekzai’s comments were the strongest public criticism so far of the Taliban’s decision to shut out girls and women from education. After moving away from a promise to open high schools to girls in 2022, the Taliban closed universities to women students at the end of the same year. Taliban leaders have spoken vaguely about a plan to re-open schools but there is still no timeframe for this.

The reports also pointed to divisions within the Taliban leadership over measures such as wide-ranging restrictions imposed on women. For some time, there have been reports of Taliban leaders based in Kabul being uneasy over decisions made by the leadership in Kandahar, which is the stronghold of Haibatullah.

Since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed crippling restrictions on girls and women, shutting them out of educational institutions, workplaces and even public spaces. India is among the countries that have called on the Taliban to protect the rights of children, women and minorities.

In September 2022, Stanekzai created a flutter by calling on the Taliban to reopen secondary schools to girls during a televised speech. Last December, he urged the government to end “restrictions and hurdles” on the media in Afghanistan, and Amu TV reported on Wednesday, citing an audio recording of Stanekzai, that he had cautioned against treating Haibatullah with “prophetic or divine” reverence.

Taliban spokesmen are yet to comment on Stanekzai’s travel to the UAE. However, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, while participating in a discussion on X spaces, acknowledged that there are “ideological differences” within the group but there were “no disputes”.

In the past, Haibatullah has cracked the whip on leaders who were seen to be going against his decrees or the established Taliban line on important issues.

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