As Taliban starts restricting men too, some regret not speaking up sooner

Beside imposing severe rules on women, new laws require men to grow fist-length beards and bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior.


Afghan men ride motorcycles along a road in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Aug. 28. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

By Rick Noack
September 22, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

As the Taliban starts enforcing draconian new rules on women in Afghanistan, it has also begun to target a group that didn’t see tight restrictions on them coming: Afghan men.

Women have faced an onslaught of increasingly severe limits on their personal freedom and rules about their dress since the Taliban seized power three years ago. But men in urban areas could, for the most part, carry on freely.

The past four weeks, however, have brought significant changes for them, too. New laws promulgated in late August mandate that men wear a fist-long beard, bar them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior, widely interpreted as a prohibition against jeans, and ban haircuts that are against Islamic law, which essentially means short or Western styles. Men are now also prohibited from looking at women other than their wives or relatives. … As a result, more are growing beards, carrying prayer rugs and leaving their jeans at home.

These first serious restrictions on men have come as a surprise to many in Afghanistan, according to a range of Afghans, including Taliban opponents, wavering supporters and even members of the Taliban regime, who spoke in phone interviews over the past two weeks. In a society where a man’s voice is often perceived as far more powerful than a woman’s, some men now wonder whether they should have spoken up sooner to defend the freedoms of their wives and daughters.

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Haq Nawaz Khan and Lutfullah Qasimyar contributed to this report.

By Rick Noack
Rick Noack is The Washington Post's Afghanistan bureau chief. Previously at The Post, he was the Paris correspondent, covering France and Europe, and an international affairs reporter based in Berlin, London and Washington.follow on X @rick_n