RASC News Agency: The Taliban-controlled Ministry of Higher Education has issued a highly classified and urgent directive to all public universities across Afghanistan, announcing a 14% reduction in its institutional workforce. Dispatched shortly before Eid al-Fitr, the directive instructs universities to immediately submit lists of personnel subject to dismissal. This workforce reduction, reportedly ordered by Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, was communicated through an official letter signed by Minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem. The letter mandates university administrations to promptly provide the ministry with the names of those affected.
Document No. 19373, dated March 31, 2025, issued by the Taliban’s Directorate of Structural Reforms, Review, and Human Resources, formalizes the enforcement of Akhundzada’s decree to downsize the ministry’s workforce by 14%. The restructuring entails the elimination of approximately 2,500 positions from a total of 9,550. Based on Decree No. 5377/717, dated March 10, 2025, the cuts affect both academic and civil service personnel. University leaderships are instructed to assess their staffing structures taking into account vacant posts, overlapping roles, and workload distribution and submit revised rosters, complete with position titles, codes, and official seals, to the ministry by April 29, 2025.
A senior ministry official confirmed the directive had been distributed under strict confidentiality and stated that universities were granted five working days to submit detailed reports of the reductions. The official affirmed that approximately 2,500 positions have been eliminated. University sources confirmed receipt of the directive and indicated that implementation is already underway. Reports suggest that the layoffs have disproportionately impacted female faculty, resulting in their near-total removal from Afghanistan’s public universities. Women have now been almost entirely erased from the country’s academic institutions.
Recent reports further reveal that 26 professors from the Sharia faculties of Kabul’s top universities have been dismissed and reassigned to administrative roles. Their positions have been filled by clerics from Taliban-affiliated religious seminaries. Minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem previously declared that the academic rank of a Taliban “mujahid” should be determined by the number of landmines he has planted an assertion emblematic of the regime’s radical redefinition of academic standards.
