Taliban says will respect women’s rights, press freedom

The group says it will allow Afghan women to work and study, assures media workers they will be protected.

The Taliban is promising to protect women’s rights and press freedom in the group’s first news conference following its stunning takeover of Afghanistan as the group’s co-founder returned to the country. “We are going to allow women to work and study. We have got frameworks, of course. Women are going to be very active in the society but within the framework of Islam,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the group’s spokesman, said at a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday. Following a lightning offensive across Afghanistan that saw many cities fall to the group with minimal resistance, the Taliban has sought to portray itself as more moderate than when it imposed a brutal rule in the late 1990s.