Last week, Taliban fighters arrested dozens of Afghan women and teenagers on the streets of Kabul for the crime of appearing in public with “bad hijab.” One young woman told the Guardian that after her arrest, she was “lashed on her feet and legs.” This behavior is in direct contradiction to Taliban dictates over attire for women.
In January 2022, a Taliban public awareness campaign explained that Sharia mandated that women “must wear the hijab.” Per the Taliban’s definition, a “hijab” is not merely a head covering but rather a burqa that covers a woman’s body and face entirely. At the time of the campaign, a spokesperson from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice explained that if a woman did not follow their orders, “it does not mean she will be punished or beaten.” By May 2022, a Taliban directive codified standards for “hijab.” For violators of their proclamations, the Taliban prescribed punishments that would be meted out to a woman’s male guardian. These included being summoned to appear before the Taliban, being imprisoned, or being taken to court.
Further details about the arrests of women are difficult to ascertain given the variety of stories concocted by the Taliban. Afghan Tolo News reported on Jan. 8 that the Taliban Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stated that women “were not detained” and were simply “beggars from the city.” A Taliban security official told press the following day that the women who were arrested were “totally without hijab” despite images from the arrest showing young women wearing head coverings typically worn by observant Muslim women. A spokesperson for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice told CBS News in a Jan. 9 article that the women “were all either released on bail after several hours or turned over to judicial authorities for further investigation.” Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman for the Taliban, told CBS News that the women who were arrested “were involved in modeling to promote clothes.” Contradicting the ministry official, he said women were “detained … and released within hours. No woman was subject to imprisonment.”
What to make of all this?
Heather Barr, the associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, told me of her organization: “We have every reason to fear for the safety of women and girls in Taliban custody, as we have documented abuses against detained women, including torture.” Barr said she feels the latest escalation “may be an indication that the Taliban feel free to act as they please given the ways in which the international community continues to, in many ways, normalize their abuses.”
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Jason Howk, the director of Global Friends of Afghanistan, told me that “unless the international community and the U.N. specifically ramps up their sanctions on the regime and begins to punish nations and individuals who further their relations with the regime, the activities of the terrorists towards women and girls will only worsen.” Similarly, Fawzia Koofi, the former deputy speaker of the Afghan Parliament, told me that the Taliban’s arrests “go against any norms in [Afghan] society.” She lamented that Afghan women “are being erased completely from the public sphere,” having lost their freedoms to move, work, access public services, seek education or justice, and, in some cases, find healthcare.
With each crackdown on Afghan women, the Taliban demonstrate that their promises to “honor women’s rights within the norms of Islamic law” were in truth a promise to deprive the women of Afghanistan of any rights whatsoever. Western leaders must take concrete steps that hold Taliban leaders to account for endangering the safety and human rights of Afghan women.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News Digital and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.