The US Secretary of State of State Antony Blinken said the Islamic Emirate fell back on its promises to allow girls beyond grade six have access to schools in Afghanistan.  

He made the remarks while testifying before a US Senate committee.  

“We have seen, including most recently, the Taliban fall back on its commitment that it had made to ensure that girls can go to school above the six grade,” he said.  

While asked by Senator Lindsey Graham about the presence of Daesh and al-Qaeda groups in Afghanistan, Blinken said that there is a very small number of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.   

“ISIS-K is as you know is of course an enemy of the Taliban and the issue there is not the will of the Taliban to take them on, it is their capacity. When it comes to the al-Qaeda, the Arab al-Qaeda core, there are a very, very small number of people,” he said.  

Shahla Arifi, an Afghan female rights activist, said that the Afghan women and girls have been deprived of their rights.  

“The women and girls of Afghanistan are the future makers of the country and have not been provided with educational, social and political rights,” she said.  

Earlier the US special envoy for Afghanistan, Thomas West, in phone call with the former President Hamid Karzai voiced concerns over the existing restrictions on girls' access to education and called on the current Afghan government to “heed calls of Afghan religious leaders and elders from across the country to see the ban reversed.”