Afghan political activist Lina Roozbeh has criticised former US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s call for the Taliban to reopen girls’ schools, saying the proposal amounts to an attempt to restore the group’s international legitimacy rather than address Afghanistan’s wider crisis. Roozbeh made the remarks in response to recent comments by Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US special representative for Afghan reconciliation, who urged the Taliban’s leader to allow girls and women to return to secondary schools, high schools and universities. He also described the exclusion of girls from Afghanistan’s university entrance examination as “sad and wrong”. Responding to those comments, Roozbeh said reopening girls’ schools alone would not resolve Afghanistan’s crisis. She argued that, even if schools were reopened, the education system would continue to operate under the Taliban’s ideology and curriculum. She said Afghanistan’s main challenge was not solely the closure of girls’ schools, but the continuation of Taliban rule, restrictions on fundamental freedoms, the weakening of national institutions and the country’s future. According to Roozbeh, if the Taliban remain in power for years to come, Afghanistan will face deeper political, social and economic crises. She argued that the country’s problems cannot be solved by granting the Taliban limited concessions that enhance the group’s legitimacy, but by creating the conditions for a political system based on the will of the Afghan people. Khalilzad was a key figure in negotiations between the United States and the Taliban. His role in the process that led to the Doha Agreement and the Taliban’s return to power has long been criticised by some Afghan political activists and opponents of the Taliban.
