Women took to the streets despite the risk of reprisals, saying losing 20 years of progress was impossible

By Roland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and Suddaf Chaudry KABUL | Telegraph

Afghan women marched in protest to demand the Taliban take heed of women’s opinions when they form a new government, in a rare public show of dissent against the fundamentalist group's vision for Afghanistan.

About three dozen women carrying placards reading “don’t be scared we are all together” and “No government will last without the support of women” marched in the Western city of Herat on Thursday morning.

“We’ve worked hard for years to achieve and maintain our rights, abandoning them now is impossible,” said one woman who addressed the crowd through a megaphone.

The protest came a day after a Taliban official said that women would be banned from serving at ministerial level in the new administration, but may be allowed to serve in more junior positions.

Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban's supreme leader, is expected to announce the formation of a new government at a ceremony in Kabul.

Senior Taliban spokesmen have said the group is committed to women’s rights “within the framework of Sharia,” but have not articulated what that means in practice.  

But many Afghan women say the imposition of arbitrary and impossible to meet "religious" conditions since the Taliban ousted the US-backed government two weeks ago have already effectively banned them from working or studying.

Shokreya Mashal, a women’s rights activist currently in hiding in Kabul, said the Taliban had reduced to rubble the progress of the last two decades, and blamed Sharia law for the backslide. 

"The Taliban reduced women to zero and all twenty years of effort. They destroyed our lives," she said. "It is this law that has ruined everything." 

It is often difficult to tell which restrictions came from group's central leadership and which were imposed by local commanders and fighters. 

"The Taliban have a different view in each province," Ms Mashal added. "In Faryab and Kandahar the Taliban are different from the Taliban in Kabul and Herat, so they do not have a clear leadership to take orders. And of course all their promises so far have been false. Women are neither free nor able to work." 

Shortly after the Taliban takeover, Shabnam Dawran, a presenter for state TV channel RTA Pasho, said the militants refused her entry to work because she was a woman.

In Daykundi, a rural province southwest of Kabul, Taliban authorities who captured the area insisted girls above sixth grade must be taught at home - effectively closing down girls schools without technically banning girls’ education.

Meanwhile the ministry of higher education in Kabul has instructed universities to segregate male and female students into separate classes taught only by lecturers of the same sex.

That caused alarm among universities, who say they do not have enough female professors or enough extra class rooms to enforce the rules. 

The Telegraph approached several female students in Kabul for comment on the restrictions. All declined, citing safety fears.

Obaidullah Baheer, a male lecturer who teaches at two of Kabul’s biggest private universities, described the requirements as "very problematic and impractical." 

“In my department I do not know of a single female faculty member. Which means even if by chance we find female faculty, we will have one or two female lecturers that are suppose to teach more than half of the university students, which is a going to be a crazy work load,” he said “It’s really beyond me as to how they will manage to make this work.”

Mr Baheer says he believed compromises will be found, possibly including using Internet-based remote learning. 

In Herat, Taliban leaders have agreed to allow “old and pious” men to continue to teach female students after protests from university faculty.