Girls' education ban won't last forever, Nobel laureate Malala tells Taliban

The Taliban's ban on girls' education won't last forever, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai said on Saturday, emphasising that Afghan women now know what it is to be "empowered".

The hard-line Afghan regime closed girls' secondary schools just hours after reopening them this week, prompting a small protest by women and girls in the capital Kabul.

"I think it was much easier for the Taliban (to enforce) a ban on girls' education back in 1996," Yousafzai, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for all children's right to education, told the Doha Forum.

"It is much harder this time -- that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered. This time is going to be much harder for the Taliban to maintain the ban on girls' education.

"This ban will not last forever."

The Taliban stopped girls from attending school during its rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when it was ousted by the US-led invasion.