Smartphones banned from schools in Afghan Taliban's heartland
AFGHANISTAN: A ban on smartphones in schools issued by Taliban authorities in southern Afghanistan came into force, students and teachers confirmed to AFP on Wednesday, over concerns of 'focus' and 'Islamic law'.
The directive by the provincial Education Department in Kandahar applies to students, teachers and administrative staff in schools and religious schools.
'This decision has been made to ensure educational discipline, focus', the statement said, adding that it was taken from a 'sharia perspective' and that smartphones contribute to 'the destruction of the future generation'.
The policy, which has already taken effect in schools across the province, has divided opinion among teachers and students.
'We did not bring smart phones with us to school today', Saeed Ahmad, a 22-year-old teacher, told AFP.
'I think this is a good decision so that there is more focus on studies,' he added.
Mohammad Anwar, an 11th grader, said 'the teachers are saying if anyone is seen bringing a phone, they will start searching the students.'
Afghan Taliban commander issues warning to TTP
Another 12th-grade student, refusing to give his name, said the ban would hinder learning in a country where girls are barred from secondary school and university as part of restrictions the UN has dubbed 'gender apartheid'.
'When the teacher writes a lesson on the board, I often take a picture so I could write it down later. Now I can't. This decision will negatively affect our studies.'
'Complete ban'
The ban has also taken root in religious schools known as madrassas.
'Now there's a complete ban. No one brings smartphones anymore,' Mohammad, 19 years old madrassa student said.
A number of countries have in recent years moved to restrict mobile phones from classrooms such as France, Denmark and Brazil.
The Taliban authorities have already introduced a ban on images of living beings in media, with multiple provinces announcing restrictions and some Taliban officials refusing to be photographed or filmed.
The Taliban's Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada called last week on officials and scholars to reduce their use of smartphones.
Russia accepts Taliban's nominated ambassador to Moscow
'This is the order of the leaders, and we must accept it,' a 28-year-old security forces member told AFP without giving his name as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
'I have now found a brick phone … I used WhatsApp on my smartphone sometimes, but now I don't use it anymore,' he added.
Some Taliban officials in Kandahar have started sharing their numbers for brick phones and switching off online messaging apps.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
4 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Armenia PM in talks with Erdogan on 'historic' Turkey visit
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during their meeting at the Dolmabahce Presidential office in Istanbul. Photo: AFP Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was meeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on a rare visit to arch-foe Turkey, in what Yerevan describes as a "historic" step toward regional peace. The talks began shortly before 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) at Istanbul's Dolmabahce Palace, Erdogan's office said. Armenia and Turkey have never established formal diplomatic ties and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s. Analysts said Pashinyan would make the case for speeding up steps towards normalisation with Turkey in a bid to ease Armenia's isolation. Relations between the two nations have been historically strained over the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — atrocities Yerevan says amount to genocide. Turkey rejects the label. And they have been further complicated by Ankara's close ties to Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, and its support for Baku in its long-running conflict with Armenia. Ahead of the talks, Pashinyan visited the Armenian Patriarchal Church and the Blue Mosque and met members of the Turkish Armenian community, he said on his official Facebook page. But his visit sparked unease back home. Police rounded up "several dozen" opposition supporters in the capital Yerevan and beyond Friday, rights groups and a lawyers coalition said. Armenia's interior ministry did not comment on the detentions, but said police had acted on information about plans to disrupt the peace. "This is a historic visit, as it will be the first time a head of the Republic of Armenia visits Turkey at this level. All regional issues will be discussed," Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonyan told reporters on Thursday. "The risks of war (with Azerbaijan) are currently minimal, and we must work to neutralise them. Pashinyan's visit to Turkey is a step in that direction." An Armenian foreign ministry official told AFP Pashinyan and Erdogan would discuss efforts to sign a comprehensive peace treaty as well as the fallout from the Iran-Israel conflict. A day ahead of his visit, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was in Turkey to meet Erdogan, hailing the two nations' alliance as "a significant factor, not only regionally but also globally". Erdogan repeated his backing for "the establishment of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia". The two nations had agreed on the text of a peace deal in March, but Azerbaijan has since outlined a host of demands — including changes to Armenia's constitution — before it will sign the document. AFP
Express Tribune
4 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Thousands protest against Israel
Iranians wave the national flag and chant slogans next to a replica of the Dome of the Rock mosque during an anti-Israeli rally in Tehran. Photo: AFP Thousands of people rallied in Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut on Friday after weekly prayers to protest Israel's strikes on Iran, chanting slogans against Israel and its main backer, the United States. Images on Iran's state television showed protesters in Tehran holding up photographs of commanders killed since the start of the war, while others waved the flags of Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. "This is the Friday of the Iranian nation's solidarity and resistance across the country," the news anchor said. "I will sacrifice my life for my leader," read a protester's banner, referring to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to state television, protests took place in other cities around the country, including in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south. Last week, Israel launched a blistering attack on Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate with barrages of missiles aimed at Israel. Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, the Imam leading Tehran's prayers, told worshippers that Israel had attacked Iran out of "despair", the official IRNA news agency reported. He accused Israel of launching a "psychological war" to "pit the people of the country against the government". "Their plans were precise, but their calculations were laughable," the Imam said. With warnings of all-out regional war intensifying, fears are growing over an intervention by Iran-backed Iraqi factions, who have threatened Washington's interests in the region if it were to join Israel in its war against Iran. In Iraq, thousands of supporters of powerful cleric Moqtada Sadr rallied after Friday prayers in Baghdad and other cities, AFP correspondents said. Sadr, who has previously criticised Tehran-backed Iraqi armed factions, retains a devoted following of millions among Iraq's majority community of Shiite Muslims. "No to Israel! No to America!" chanted demonstrators gathered in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, the cleric's stronghold in the capital. "It is an unjust war... Israel has no right" to hit Iran, said protester Abu Hussein. "Israel is not in it for the (Iranian) nuclear (programme). What Israel and the Americans want is to dominate the Middle East," added the 54-year-old taxi driver. In the city of Kufa, protesters set fire to Israeli and American flags. Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of the United States. In Lebanon, hundreds of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets in the group's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs. AFP
Express Tribune
4 hours ago
- Express Tribune
WB, IMF climate snub 'worrying': COP29 presidency
Participating world leaders and delegates pose for a family photo during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku. Photo: AFP The hosts of the most recent UN climate talks are worried international lenders are retreating from their commitments to help boost funding for developing countries' response to global warming. This anxiety has grown as the Trump administration has slashed foreign aid and discouraged US-based development lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from focussing on climate finance. Developing nations, excluding China, will need an estimated $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in financial assistance to transition to renewable energy and climate-proof their economies from increasing weather extremes. But nowhere near this amount has been committed. At last year's UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations agreed to increase climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035, an amount decried as woefully inadequate. Azerbaijan and Brazil, which is hosting this year's COP30 conference, have launched an initiative to plug the shortfall that includes expectations of "significant" contributions from international lenders. But so far only two — the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank — have responded to a call to engage the initiative with ideas, said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev. "We call on their shareholders to urgently help us to address these concerns," he told climate negotiators at a high-level summit in the German city of Bonn this week. "We fear that a complex and volatile global environment is distracting" many of those expected to play a big role in bridging the climate finance gap, he added. His team travelled to Washington in April for the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings hoping to find the same enthusiasm for climate lending they had encountered a year earlier. But instead they found institutions "very much reluctant now to talk about climate at all", said Azerbaijan's top climate negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev. This was a "worrisome trend", he said, given expectations these lenders would extend the finance needed in the absence of other sources. "They're very much needed," he said. The United States, the World Bank's biggest shareholder, has sent a different message. On the sidelines of the April spring meetings, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the bank to focus on "dependable technologies" rather than "distortionary climate finance targets." This could mean investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production, he said. Under the Paris Agreement, wealthy developed countries — those most responsible for global warming to date — are obligated to pay climate finance to poorer nations. AFP
