Rifts within Taliban surface

The Taliban prohibition on girls' education shows the movement's ultra-conservatives retain tight control of the Islamist group, and exposes a power struggle that puts at risk crucial aid for Afghanistan's desperate population, experts say.

The ban has triggered international outrage and even left many in the Taliban movement baffled by the decision.

"The order was devastating," a senior Taliban member told AFP. "The supreme leader himself interfered."

All Taliban officials who spoke to AFP on the subject did so on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the topic.

Secondary schools for girls were ordered to shut last month, just hours after being reopened for the first time since the Taliban's return to power in August.

The shocking U-turn came after a secret meeting of the group's leadership in the city of Kandahar, the Taliban's de facto power centre. Officials have never justified the ban, apart from saying the education of girls must be according to "Islamic principles".

But one senior Taliban official told AFP that Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and some other senior figures were "ultra-conservative on this issue" and dominated the discussion.

Two groups -- the urban and the ultra-conservatives -- have emerged in the movement, he said.

"The ultra-conservatives have won this round," he added, referring to a group of clerics including Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Sharai, Minister for Religious Affairs Noor Mohammad Saqeb and Minister for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Mohammad Khalid Hanafi.

A senior Taliban member said the hardliners were trying to appease thousands of fighters who hail from the deeply conservative countryside.

"For them, even if a woman steps out of her home it is immoral. So, imagine what it means to educate her," he said.

The Taliban member said Akhundzada was against "modern, secular education" as he associated it with life under former Western-backed presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani.

"That's his worldview."

The Taliban returned to power last year as US-led forces ended an occupation in place since an invasion ousted the hardliners in 2001.