RASC News Agency: In a stark demonstration of its relentless campaign against education and intellectual development, the Taliban regime has forcibly shuttered the Educational Radio and Television Directorate (ERTD), a vital institution that for years provided essential academic and instructional broadcasts across Afghanistan. On Saturday, June 21, credible sources confirmed the complete closure of this pivotal educational media outlet, with all its operations abruptly halted and its staff transferred to the Taliban-controlled National Radio and Television of Afghanistan (RTA). The forced suspension of ERTD’s programming represents a devastating blow to millions of Afghanistani students, particularly those in remote and underserved regions where access to formal schooling or digital infrastructure is severely limited. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ERTD emerged as a lifeline, delivering remote learning content to countless children and young adults nationwide. Its abrupt cessation now threatens to further marginalize an entire generation already bearing the brunt of Taliban’s draconian policies.
Although the Taliban authorities have offered no official justification for this closure, the action is widely perceived as a deliberate and strategic effort to tighten their ideological grip on Afghan society by extinguishing one of the few remaining avenues for independent education. Since regaining power in August 2021, the Taliban have aggressively dismantled the country’s educational framework most notoriously by banning secondary and higher education for girls, removing women from teaching positions, and systematically erasing progressive curricula in favor of rigid dogma. Residents and education advocates have voiced profound alarm over the implications of this shutdown. For many Afghanistani children, especially in rural and conflict-affected provinces, ERTD’s broadcasts constituted the only accessible educational resource. “The Taliban’s closure of this media outlet strips away what little hope remains for children denied access to schools and internet,” said an education rights activist in Kabul.
Experts warn that the termination of distance learning broadcasts signals a deeper, more pernicious phase in the Taliban’s war on knowledge. By silencing educational media, the regime aims not only to suppress academic learning but also to stifle critical thinking, intellectual freedom, and civic awareness foundations essential to any society’s progress and stability. The international community and human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned the Taliban’s oppressive restrictions on education, categorizing these actions as grave violations of children’s rights and breaches of international humanitarian standards. Yet, despite mounting evidence of the regime’s systematic repression, global responses have often lacked the urgency and pressure required to compel meaningful change.
Afghanistan’s educational future now hangs precariously in the balance, imperiled by a regime that views learning especially for women and girls not as a right or necessity, but as a threat to its autocratic rule. The closure of the Educational Radio and Television Directorate starkly epitomizes the Taliban’s broader project of intellectual repression and social regression. Without decisive international intervention and sustained advocacy, the Taliban’s assault on education threatens to consign millions of Afghanistani youth to a future bereft of knowledge, opportunity, and dignity.
