Taliban begins enforcing new draconian laws, and Afghan women despair

As the Taliban begins enforcing new draconian laws, Afghan women say that whatever hopes they once harbored for an easing of the severe restrictions on them have largely vanished.

The new religious code issued late last month bans women from raising their voices, reciting the Quran in public, and looking at men other than their husbands or relatives. It requires women to cover the lower half of their faces in addition to donning a head covering they were already expected to wear, among other rules.

Women’s lives were heavily regulated by the Taliban-run government before the latest rules were promulgated, and some of the new laws codify restrictions that were imposed on women in practice. But Afghan women, speaking in phone interviews over the past week, pointed to mounting signs of a crackdown in urban areas, where rules had been less rigorously enforced.

The Taliban’s morality police, which are an extension of the regime’s most conservative elements, appear to have been handed an unprecedented amount of power in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere, women said. While the morality police’s white robes were a rare sight in Kabul, they have become omnipresent since late August, several women said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/15/taliban-afghanistan-laws-women-rights/