Education in Afghanistan: What Remains After the Taliban’s Return
By Sabahat Mazhar
On 30 March 2026, Hasht-e-Subh daily reported that university students are being forced to sign a 14-clause pledge form, the sixth article of which mandates all university students to follow Sunni Hanafi Islam to preserve unity and solidarity.
This is part of a broader pattern of restrictions on education that have been implemented since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Immediately after returning to power, the Taliban started replacing university leaders with Taliban-affiliated clerics. This was followed by banning women from secondary and higher education in 2022. Later, in 2023, subjects like law and political science were removed from university curricula. International development aid to Afghanistan has also seen significant reductions during this period, affecting public services, including education.
The most prominent among the Taliban’s measures is the ban on women’s education. This was done in stages. After returning to power in August 2021, the regime initially suspended secondary education for girls, citing the need to make gender segregation arrangements. Following this, the Taliban formally extended a nationwide ban on secondary education for girls in March 2022. Later, in December 2022, higher education was also banned for women, making Afghanistan the only country in the world that denies females access to education past the primary level. The reasons cited by the Taliban included the need to align education with Islamic principles. As a result, an estimated 2.2 million Afghan girls have been locked out of formal education.
As part of this broader pattern, restrictions also extended to the ideological domain. In March 2026, the 14-clause pledge form was disseminated across public and private universities by the Dawat Wa Irshad department of Afghanistan. It enumerated several restrictions for students, including banning music, limiting affiliation with anti-Taliban political groups, and prohibiting roaming without a beard. While other clauses regulate behavior, Clause 6 goes beyond behavioral regulation, demanding a signed declaration of religious identity — that students follow the Hanafi Sunni school of Islam. At the end of the pledge form, students are warned that non-compliance will lead to punishment, with no right to file complaints. As a result of non-compliance, Shia students were beaten by armed Taliban-affiliated individuals at Bamyan University, of whom 12 were injured, 3 critically.
Furthermore, academic purges are a visible dimension of these restrictions. The Media Line has reported that Afghan universities are being systematically purged of dissenting academics, with professors dismissed, intimidated, and forced into exile. Twelve professors from Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani University in Kunar were dismissed, accused of being “Salafists”. Additionally, approximately 50 professors were fired in Balkh, 300 in Herat, and dozens in other provinces for going abroad. Professors who won scholarships abroad were also replaced by Taliban-linked figures. The cumulative effect of these dismissals has resulted in a significant brain drain, with experienced academics fleeing.
In a world with almost 60 authoritarian regimes, the global debate is heavily focused on academic freedom under authoritarian regimes. The Council of Europe has positioned academic freedom as a fundamental pillar of democratic resilience. Afghanistan is not an isolated case — across the region, neighbors like China and Iran have similarly imposed restrictions on academic freedom and curriculum content. The international community remains divided — sanctions and isolation have failed to moderate authoritarian academic policies elsewhere in the region, yet diplomatic engagement with the Taliban has equally failed to reverse these restrictions. For Afghanistan’s students, this debate is not abstract — it directly determines whether they can access education on their own terms.
Taken together, these measures reflect a systematic restructuring of education in Afghanistan — one that has excluded millions of women, displaced experienced academics, and imposed ideological conformity on those who remain. The net result is an education system where students are molded, not educated.