On Saturday, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice announced that Afghan women may no longer leave the house if their faces are not fully covered with a burqa. If a woman appears unveiled, increasingly strict punishments will be meted out on a woman’s husband or male relative. These punishments include jail time, loss of employment, and unspecified further measures.
Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said the order is meant to ensure Afghan women “live with dignity and safety.” Of course, the Taliban pose the greater threat to women’s safety and dignity by publicly beating, threatening, and raping women and jailing female protesters who dare speak out against their misogyny.
In passing days, Afghan men have told me with dismay of the anxiety and depression their wives face. One former government employee told me of his sister’s struggles to travel safely to her teaching job. An evacuation volunteer told me of a former Afghan army member under threat for her work. She now disguises herself as a man to move more freely in society. Several brave Afghan women also told me of their lives under the Taliban. Acknowledging the threat of Taliban vengeance, most asked to use a pseudonym to protect their identities.
Frogh, who asked to be identified by her first name, has lived apart from her family in the urban center of Kabul since 2014. Under the Taliban, she told me she has lost “everything,” including her job, dream, freedom, and happiness. She said she sunk into a deep depression because fear of the Taliban robbed even joyous moments of happiness. Losing the right to decide on her clothing was a crushing blow. “Every day, I feel that I am burning,” Frogh explained.
Coming of age in a traditional society plagued by economic, cultural, security, and family concerns was already difficult for Zarghona. Nonetheless, the Special Immigrant Visa applicant managed to obtain her master’s degree in journalism by the time the Taliban came to power. Instead of working as a journalist, Zarghona spent the last nine months “at home like a prisoner.” With the Taliban in control of the country, she said that “life is death.”
Laila once worked in business management. She always understood that she might one day perish in a Taliban suicide bombing. She never expected to be told what color or style of clothing to wear. “I did not know that they would take my human value from me,” she explained. Laila said she will not silently withstand the Taliban’s oppression. “I only have the opportunity to live once,” she said.
The Taliban’s rulings can be more repressive in southern Afghanistan, where provincial governors set their own standards, according to former human rights defender Hamida. In Kandahar, Hamida said women were beaten while shopping because they wore black head coverings rather than the blue burqas common under the Taliban’s previous rule. In the Helmand province, she said the Taliban threatened to burn male shopkeepers’ shops if they sell products to women. In the districts, she said the “atrocities they have started … are even worse.”
Taliban scholars scoffed at the commentators and leaders who believed a “new” Taliban would embrace progress in exchange for legitimacy after their takeover of Afghanistan. The group’s progressively restrictive decrees show its ideological ambition remains unchanged. The leaders of the world must intercede as the Taliban drag Afghan women once more into the darkness of anonymity, dependence, fear, and violence.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
