Now, Taliban stops women from sightseeing: All ways Afghan women’s rights have been suppressed

The Taliban government in Afghanistan is at it again. The latest curb it has imposed on women is a ban from one of its most popular national parks – a move rights groups have roundly condemned. The Taliban government had accused women visitors at the Band-e-Amir park of failing to adhere to the correct way of wearing the hijab. But this is old hat for the Taliban. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule respecting rights for women’s and minorities, the Taliban has widely implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia since returning to power in August 2021, the government has made a number of moves to supress women’s rights. Let’s take a closer look at all the ways the government has supressed women’s rights: Ban from Band-e-Amir The Taliban government’s morality ministry closed the Band-e-Amir national park to women over the weekend, claiming female visitors were failing to cover up with proper Islamic dress. The Band-e-Amir park, 175 kilometers west of Kabul, is renowned for its striking blue lakes surrounded by sweeping cliffs. A major tourist attraction in Bamiyan, it became the country’s first national park in 2009 and pulls in thousands of visitors every year. It is a major source of income for locals and their sightseeing, restaurant, hotel and handicraft businesses. The Bamyan province park is a hugely popular spot for domestic tourism and is regularly swarmed with Afghans relaxing at the shore or paddling the waters in rented boats. [caption id=“attachment_13000892” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Taliban members rejoice on the second anniversary of the fall of Kabul on a street near the US embassy in Kabul. Reuters[/caption] The move came a week after Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Mohammad Khalid Hanafi visited the province. Hanafi told officials and religious clerics that women haven’t been adhering to the correct way of wearing the hijab, asking security personnel to stop women from visiting the tourist hotspot.

“Going sightseeing is not a must for women,” Hanafi said at the time.

“We must take action from today. We must prevent the non-observance of hijab,” he added. Ministry spokesman Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif shared a report of Hanafi’s remarks late Saturday night, including the use of security forces, clerics and elders to carry out Hanafi’s order. A recording of the minister’s speech in Bamiyan, aligning with Akif’s report, was shared on social media. Akif was not immediately available for comment on Sunday. Ministry spokesman Akef Muhajir said local religious leaders requested the temporary closure because women from outside the province were not observing the hijab dress code. Human Rights Watch’s Associate Women’s Rights Director Heather Barr called the decision to ban women “cruel in a very intentional way”. “Not content with depriving girls and women of education, employment, and free movement, the Taliban also want to take from them parks and sport and now even nature, as we see from this latest ban on women visiting Band-e-Amir,” Barr added. “Step by step the walls are closing in on women as every home becomes a prison.” Stopping girls from school beyond Class 6 The Taliban had initially stopped girls from attending school beyond Class 6. As per NDTV, the Taliban has taken it even one step further in some places – barring girls over age 10 from attending school. The outlet quoted sources as telling BBC Persian the Taliban in Ghazni province as informing education officials that “girls over 10 years old are not allowed to study in primary schools". [caption id=“attachment_12997282” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Erasing women from the public sphere is central to Taliban ideology. AP[/caption] The report further noted that girls’ schools heads were requested to send female students studying beyond Class 3 home. “We were told that girls who are tall and over 10 years old are not allowed to enter the school,” one student told BBC. Ban on women in universities The Taliban in December 2022 banned female students from attending universities. A letter shared by the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Ziaullah Hashmi, told private and public universities to implement the ban as soon as possible and to inform the ministry once the ban is in place. Afghanistan’s higher education minister, Nida Mohammed Nadim, said at the time the university ban was necessary to prevent the mixing of genders and because he believed some subjects being taught violated the principles of Islam. He said the ban, issued from the southern city of Kandahar by the Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, was in place until further notice. Meena, 52, a lecturer in Afghanistan, told The Guardian, “My female students are distraught and I don’t know how to console them.” “One of them moved to Kabul from a remote province, overcoming so many hardships, because she got into a prestigious university here. All her hopes and dreams were crushed today.”

Meena was old enough to recall the last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

“I lost many years of my education last time they were in power. And the day the Taliban took over Kabul, I knew that they would ban the girls from university.” “They may seem like a changed group with their smartphones, social media accounts and nice cars, but they are the same Taliban that denied me the education and are now killing the future of my students,” she told the newspaper. “I can’t fulfill my dreams, my hopes. Everything is disappearing before my eyes and I can’t do anything about it,” said a third-year journalism and communication student at Nangarhar University. She did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. “Is being a girl a crime? If that’s the case, I wish I wasn’t a girl,” she added. “My father had dreams for me, that his daughter would become a talented journalist in the future. That is now destroyed. So, you tell me, how will a person feel in this situation?” She added that she had not lost all hope yet. “God willing, I will continue my studies in any way. I’m starting online studies. And, if it doesn’t work, I will have to leave the country and go to another country,” she said. “I have nothing to say. Not only me but all my friends have no words to express our feelings,” Madina, an 18-year-old told the newspaper. “Everyone is thinking about the unknown future ahead of them. They buried our dreams.” Human Rights Watch had at the time criticised the decision and called the move “a shameful decision” that makes clear the Taliban’s lack of respect for “the fundamental rights of Afghans.” [caption id=“attachment_12997292” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The Taliban appear undeterred, continuing where they left off 20 years ago when they first held power. The results of their ambitions are nearly apocalyptic. AP[/caption] The foreign ministers of the G7 group — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US, and the European Union — also warned the Taliban, calling it a move against humanity. Major Muslim countries including Turkey, Qatar, and Pakistan also urged the Taliban’s government to reconsider their decision. In August, an adviser at the Higher Education Ministry, Molvi Abdul Jabbar, said universities were ready to readmit female students as soon as Akhundzada gives the order for the ban to be lifted. He was unable to say when or if that would happen. Akhundzada “ordered that the universities be closed, so they closed,” he said. “When he says they are open, they will open the same day. All our leaders are in favour of (restarting girls’ education), even our ministers are in favour of it.” Jabbar said he last met Akhundzada seven or eight years ago. He fought alongside him against the Russians during the 10-year Soviet war in Afghanistan and has been part of the Taliban for 27 years. “It is only because of our obedience (to Akhundzada) that we are following his orders,” he said. Minister Nadim had presented the ban as a temporary measure while solutions were found to fix issues around gender segregation, course material and dress codes. He said universities would reopen for women once they were resolved. The Taliban made similar promises about high school access for girls, saying classes would resume for them once “technical issues” around uniforms and transport were sorted out, but girls are still shut out of classrooms. No scholarships abroad Denied access to university, some students had hoped that attaining a scholarship abroad would be a means of salvation – or escape. “After the Taliban shut universities for women, my only hope was to get a scholarship which would help me study abroad,” Natkai, a 20-year-old Afghan student told BBC.

But the Taliban have cut off that route as well.

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“When the Taliban officials saw our tickets and student visas, they said girls are not allowed to leave Afghanistan on student visas,” Natkai said. Natkai was one of 60 women stopped at the airport from leaving the country. Shams Ahmad, who had taken his sister to the airport, said, “The scholarship gave new hope to my sister after the universities were closed here. She left home with hope and returned in tears.” “All her rights have been taken away.” Beauty salons banned The Taliban in June banned all beauty salons in Afghanistan. The Taliban listed a series of services offered by beauty salons that it said violated Islam. They included eyebrow shaping, the use of other people’s hair to augment a woman’s natural hair and the application of makeup, which it said interferes with the ablutions required before offering prayers. The ban also drew concern from international groups worried about its impact on female entrepreneurs. [caption id=“attachment_12877332” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] An Afghan woman walks among Taliban soldiers at a checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan. File image/Reuters[/caption] The United Nations said it was engaged with Afghanistan authorities to get the prohibition reversed.

“This isn’t about getting your hair and nails done. This is about 60,000 women losing their jobs," said Barr.

“This is about women losing one of the only places they could go for community and support, after the Taliban systematically destroyed the whole system put in place to respond to domestic violence.” Prohibiting women from working, crackdown on media Women have also been prohibited from working in NGOs. In December, the Taliban’s economy ministry ordered all NGOs to tell their women employees to stop coming to work – or face getting their licenses revoked, as per BBC. Most women have been barred from returning to their government jobs, as per VOA. The Taliban has also imposed a number of restrictions on women in the media including ordering female presenters to cover their faces and only leaving their eyes uncovered. What do experts say? That the situation is dire for women in Afghanistan. CNN quoted Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj as saying “there is no such thing as women’s freedom anymore.” “The women in Afghanistan are being slowly erased from society, from life, from everything – their opinions, their voices, what they think, where they are,” Seraj, who was nominated for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, added. A United Nations report in June, noting all the ways women were suppressed in Afghanistan, noted that these limitations set on women had given rise to “significant tensions” inside homes. The report found an increase in domestic violence and “notable evidence” of a “significant increase” in forced marriage of girls, as per CNN. With inputs from agencies