The newly appointed Taliban Minister of Higher Education appealed to the academics and intellectuals to return to Afghanistan, stating that a life of poverty in the home country is better than life in foreign countries.
Mawlawi Mohammad Neda Nadim, the Taliban’s acting minister of higher education, said in a videotape aired on Afghanistan National Television on Monday, November 14, that the group has no “enmity” with anyone and urged university academics that had left the nation to return.
Addressing the academics and elites who have departed Afghanistan, Nadim claims: “Everyone’s safety is protected, and we have no enmity or resentment toward anyone. We request that the professors who left the country return to the country to educate the new generation.”
The Taliban official, who replaced Mullah Abdul Baqi Haqqani, requested that the appropriate agencies “invite capable people inside and outside of the country” in order to address the shortage of professors in the country’s educational institutions.
This is because, following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, a major portion of the Afghan university and academic capacities left the country, leaving educational institutions with a critical shortage of academics.
Reports claim that 229 professors from the universities in Kabul, Balkh, and Herat alone have left Afghanistan. It is also said that Kabul University alone requires more than 200 professors to restructure the curriculum.
