KABUL, Sept 21, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - The Taliban supreme leader has installed a 
loyalist cleric as Afghanistan's education minister, with the hardline 
Islamists doubling down on their ban on secondary education for girls.

Hundreds of thousands of girls and young women have been deprived of an 
education since the Taliban returned to power a year ago.

Habibullah Agha, a member of reclusive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada's 
inner circle, was named the new education minister in a reshuffle announced 
by the government spokesman on Tuesday.

"We can't make any plans on our own. We don't do that. Rather, I will act 
according to the instructions given by the supreme leader," Agha, 68, told 
AFP on Wednesday.

He refused to share his personal views on girls' education, and said he had 
not received any orders yet on the matter.

Many conservative Afghan clerics within the Taliban are sceptical of modern 
education.

"The appointment of Habibullah Agha... indicates the Taliban are elevating 
loyalists who reject the reopening of girls' schools," said Nishank Motwani, 
an Afghan specialist and fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School.

Outgoing education minister Noorullah Munir was in charge when the government 
announced the reopening of girls' schools in March.

Akhundzada blocked the decision in a move that upset the Taliban's political 
leadership in Kabul.

Munir was named the head of a body that issues religious edicts in the 
Tuesday reshuffle.

The international community has made the reopening of secondary schools for 
girls a key condition for recognising the Taliban government.

Taliban officials say the ban is temporary, but they have also wheeled out a 
litany of excuses for the closures -- from a lack of funds to time needed to 
remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.

Munir told local media this month that it was a cultural issue, claiming many 
male elders in deeply conservative and patriarchal Afghanistan were against 
their teenage daughters attending school.

Within weeks of seizing power last year, the Taliban began imposing severe 
restrictions on women to comply with their austere vision of Islam -- 
effectively squeezing them out of public life.

Apart from closing high schools for girls, the Taliban have barred women from 
many government jobs and also ordered them to cover up in public, preferably 
with an all-encompassing burqa.

Agha, the new education minister, was a judge during the first regime of the 
Taliban between 1996 and 2001.