Women back in school, but march is canceled

KABUL, Afghanistan -- With hard-line Taliban rulers on the run, Afghan women were able to return to medical school for the first time in five years. But that triumph was tempered Tuesday by the cancellation of a women's protest march.

Though Afghan schools are on break due to the fighting, women at Kabul University have begun appearing for the first time since they were banned by the Taliban.

Dozens of women, meanwhile, crammed into the third-floor apartment of activist Suraya Parlika on Tuesday ahead of what they thought would be the biggest protest march for women's rights since the Taliban fled the capital two weeks ago.

But Parlika told the disappointed crowd that the march had been canceled by Younus Qanooni, head of the Northern Alliance delegation in Germany for talks on forming a new Afghan government.

"Due to security problems it is not the time for a march," Parlika quoted Qanooni as saying during a telephone conversation they held Sunday. Qanooni is the alliance interior minister and controls the 3,000 security troops in the streets of Kabul, which has been calm since the Northern Alliance took over. He did not specify what the security problems were, Parlika said.

Asked if she believed Qanooni, Parlika said, "I'm not sure the Northern Alliance wants to improve the place of women in our society."

The alliance has included a woman in its 11-person delegation to Germany and says women will be allowed to play a public role that was denied them under the Taliban. However, the alliance has not specified which Taliban edicts against women it plans to lift.

As the women milled about Parlika's apartment, none covered her face with the head-to-toe burqa. Some pulled back the burqa's face covering, while others such as Parlika shed it all together and wore only headscarves as they gave interviews and were photographed.

However, all still wear burqas outdoors.

"If we go on a march, then we will put away our burqas -- we will put them away forever," said Parlika, 57.

"The women have an important role to play in rebuilding Afghan society," said Abiba Omar, who lost her job as a teacher when the Taliban banned women from working outside the home and ended education for girls over the age of eight. "We lost the last five years sitting at home. It was very boring."

When Omar's two sons left for school, her two daughters would sometimes cry because they couldn't go, she said.

The Kabul University medical faculty announced it was prepared to reregister female students who had been attending the university in pre-Taliban days, and 15 signed up Monday, followed by 30 more Tuesday, said faculty administrator Nur Ahmed Sherzad.

Women made up about 40 percent of the students in the medical department before they were barred, he said.

The university, the country's premier school, was more than half female in the 1980s when many young men were either fighting in the government army aligned with the Soviet Union or were part of the Afghan guerrilla groups.

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