KABUL, Afghanistan — As students in Afghanistan return to university for the first time since the Taliban's swift rise to power, photos have emerged of curtains separating students based on gender.
Reuters first shared the images of men and women sitting in a classroom at Avicenna University in Kabul.
According to the news outlet, teachers and students at several Afghan universities told reporters female students were "being segregated in class, taught separately or restricted to certain parts of the campus."
"I really felt terrible when I entered the class," Anjila, a 21-year-old female student at Kabul University told Reuters. "We are gradually going back to 20 years ago."
Anjila told Reuters that while women had sat separately from men in classrooms even before the Taliban's return to power, there was no physical barrier.
Last week, Adbul Baqi Haqqani, the acting minister for the Ministry of Higher Education in Afghanistan said women could go to college but "had to be taught by female professors and separated from male students," Business Insider reports.
During their earlier rule, the Taliban barred women from working outside the home or attending school. Women were required to wear the burqa and had to be accompanied by a male relative whenever they went outside.
These days, the Taliban leadership says it is open to women's education, but rights groups say the rules vary depending on local commanders and the communities themselves. Afghanistan remains an overwhelmingly conservative country, especially outside major cities.
Last month, the Taliban vowed to respect women's rights, forgive those who fought them and ensure Afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorists as part of a publicity blitz aimed at reassuring world powers and a fearful population.
At the time, Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban's longtime spokesperson, promised the Taliban would honor women’s rights within the norms of Islamic law, without elaborating. In recent weeks, the Taliban encouraged women to return to work and allowed girls to return to school, handing out Islamic headscarves at the door.
But women in Afghanistan have said they do not believe the Taliban have changed their ways. Around the same time as Mujahid's statements, a group of women wearing Islamic headscarves demonstrated briefly in Kabul, holding signs demanding the Taliban not “eliminate women” from public life.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, noted both the Taliban’s vows and the fears of everyday Afghans.
“Such promises will need to be honored, and for the time being — again understandably, given past history — these declarations have been greeted with some skepticism,” he said.
A 2020 Human Rights Watch report said the Taliban no longer officially oppose girls’ education, but very few Taliban officials actually permit girls to attend school past puberty, some not permitting girls’ education at all. That’s because individual commanders largely determine education policies in areas they control.
The Associated Press and TEGNA contributed to this report.