Kabul University upgrades Dari and Pashto departments to separate faculties
Kabul University has announced that, under a decision by the Taliban administration’s Higher Education Council, the departments of Dari Language and Literature and Pashto Language and Literature have been separated from a single faculty structure and upgraded to two independent faculties. According to the university, this change has been implemented for the first time in Afghanistan’s higher education system.
In a statement published on 17 Sunbula on the university’s official website, Kabul University said the decision was approved on 15 Sunbula 1405. According to the announcement, the two disciplines, which previously operated as two departments under one faculty, will now be administered independently.
Kabul University said teaching in Dari and Pashto language and literature has been offered at the university up to doctoral level since 2013. The institution said these two fields are the only active doctoral programmes among Afghanistan’s universities.
Some professors and education experts have described the change as structurally important, although views differ on its practical outcome. Ahmadzia Rafat, a former professor at the Faculty of Literature, told the BBC that the independence of these faculties could pave the way for improving the quantity and quality of postgraduate courses and creating more doctoral programmes.
By contrast, Mujib Mehrdad, a writer based in the United States, described the move as a “formal progress” and said it was still not possible to speak with certainty about the logic behind the decision. He also expressed concern about the shortage of specialist professors in the current situation.
According to officials and professors in these fields, one of the main reasons for the separation was the difficulty of teaching linguistics and literature simultaneously within a single structure. Ajmal Shakli, head of the Pashto Language and Literature department at Kabul University, said that under the previous system, students had to study in two different areas at the same time, a situation he said did not produce desirable academic results.
In the Dari Language and Literature field, teaching is offered in literature, linguistics and lexicology. Kabul University is one of Afghanistan’s oldest higher education institutions and, alongside Dari and Pashto, also teaches English, French, German, Turkish and Chinese at undergraduate level.
