Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday, May 7 have ordered all Afghan women to henceforth wear burka clothing in public.
Specifically, the blue burka became a global symbol of the Taliban’s previous regime in Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, and the decision to make it mandatory again marks an escalation of growing restrictions on women in public.
The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice read a decree from the sect’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada at a press conference in Kabul.
“We want our sisters to live with dignity and safety,” said Khalid Hanafi, acting minister for the all-male ministry – which replaced the country’s women’s ministry after the militants took control in August 2021.
The decree says that if a woman does not cover her face outside the home, her father or closest male relative would be visited and eventually imprisoned or fired from government jobs.
It also states that if women have no important work to be done outside, it is better for them to stay at home.
Islamic principles and Islamic ideology are more important to us than anything else,” Mr. Hanafi said.
The decree adds that the ideal face covering is the blue burka, which shows only the eyes.
Shir Mohammad, an official from the vice and virtue ministry, said: “For all dignified Afghan women wearing hijab is necessary and the best Hijab is chadori (the head-to-toe burka) which is part of our tradition and is respectful.
“Those women who are not too old or young must cover their face, except the eyes.”
Most women in Afghanistan wear a headscarf for religious reasons, but many in urban areas such as Kabul do not cover their faces.
The Taliban previously decided against reopening schools to girls above grade six (around 11 years old), going back on an earlier promise.
The international community has urged its leaders to reconsider.
Prior to their takeover in 2021, the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the US-led invasion in 2001, and banned female education and employment.
After the regime was toppled, girls and women were allowed to return to school and work, and the international community had made the education of girls a key demand for any future recognition of the Taliban administration.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has backtracked on its earlier promise of allowing girls return to schools, after it announced that all girls’ high schools in the country will be closed, hours after they reopened for the first time in nearly seven months.
The backtracking by the Taliban administration means that female students above the sixth grade will not be able to attend school.
A notice by the Ministry of Education on Wednesday stated that schools for girls would remain closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture, according to a government news outlet, the Bakhtar News Agency
“We inform all girls high schools and those schools that are having female students above class six that they are off until the next order,” the notice said.
Taliban spokesman, Inamullah Samangani, who confirmed the closure of the schools to journalists, said the girls had been ordered to remain at home for the time being.
“Yes, it’s true. The girls have been ordered to remain at home till a plan is drawn up according to Islamic law,” he said.
Before the sudden closure, the Ministry of Education had announced last week that schools for all students, including girls, would open around the country on Wednesday – the first day of Afghanistan’s new school year – after months of restrictions on education for high school-aged girls.
On Tuesday evening, a ministry spokesman released a video congratulating all students on their return to class, but their enthusiasm was dampened a few hours later with the administration’s announcement of the closure.
The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the regime had banned female education and most female employment. But after returning to power in August last year, they had promised a reform and opportunities for girls’ education and employment.
But so far, the Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on women, effectively banning them from many government jobs, policing what they wear and preventing them from travelling outside of their cities alone.
Female judges in Afghanistan say they are being threatened and haunted by men they convicted for rape and murder, after they were freed from prison by the new Taliban regime.
Speaking to the BBC on behalf of over 200 female judges in the country who are currently in hiding, six former female judges said they had to go into hiding after recieving threats from the men they imprisoned.
The women said they were moving every few days, as the Taliban had been searching for them, visiting their former homes and harassing their relatives.
The six female former judges who had dealt with cases like murder, torture, rape, and violence against women, said they were just six of the 220 female judges across Afghanistan who were now in hiding.
According to the report, every one of them had received death threats and had to change their phone numbers.
All of them say they have been changing their locations every few days to avoid being tracked down.
One of the judges who was identified simply as Masooma, had sentenced a man to 20 years in prison for murdering his wife.
After the case was over, the criminal approached me and said: ‘When I get out of prison, I will do to you what I did to my wife,’” Masooma said.
She added that, since the Taliban takeover, “he has called me many times and said he has taken all of my information from the court offices.”
“He told me: ‘I will find you and have my revenge.’”
“I can still see the image of that young woman in my mind. It was a brutal crime.
“At the time I didn’t take him seriously. But since the Taliban took power, he has called me many times and said he has taken all of my information from the court offices.”
In her career as a judge, Masooma had convicted hundreds of men for violence against women, including rape, murder and torture.
But just days after the Taliban took control of her city and thousands of convicted criminals were released from prison, the death threats began.
She said text messages, voice notes and unknown numbers began bombarding her phone.
“It was midnight when we heard the Taliban had freed all the prisoners from jail,” says Masooma.
“Immediately we fled. We left our homes and everything behind.
“Sometimes I think, what is our crime? Being educated? Trying to help women and punish criminals?
“I love my country. But now I am a prisoner. We have no money. We cannot leave the house.
“I look at my young son and I don’t know how to explain to him why he can’t talk to other children or play out in the hall. He’s already traumatised.
“I can only pray for the day when we will be free again.”
Another woman named, Sanaa, who was a judge for more than 30 years, said she had received “more than 20 threatening phone calls from former inmates who have now been released.”
For more than three decades, Judge Sanaa investigated cases of violence against women and children.
She says the majority of her cases involved convicting members of the Taliban as well as militant group Isis.
“I have received more than 20 threatening phone calls from former inmates who have now been released.”
She is currently in hiding with more than a dozen family members.
She said that a male relative who returned to her family home was met by a Taliban member looking for her, and that the fighter beat him so badly that he had to go to the hospital.
Another of the six female judges, Asma, said:
“I wanted to serve my country, that’s why I became a judge,” says Asma, speaking from a safe house.
“In the family affairs court, I dealt mostly with cases involving women who wanted a divorce or separation from members of the Taliban.
This posed a real threat to us. Once, the Taliban even launched rockets at the court.
“We also lost one of our best friends and judges. She disappeared on her way home from work. Only later was her body discovered.”
But a Taliban spokesman, Bilal Karimi, who was asked to comment on the allegations, said:
“Female judges should live like any other family without fear. No-one should threaten them. Our special military units are obliged to investigate such complaints and act if there is a violation.”
After overthrowing the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban, on Tuesday, announced key posts for their new interim government with strong non-conformist and wanted terrorists as part of the new regime.
Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, who is on a UN sanctions list, was named as leader of the new government, while Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, was named as his deputy at a news conference in Kabul.
Here is a rundown of several key senior officials announced into the Taliban government:
Mohammad Hasan Akhund, Acting Prime Minister
Mullah Mohammed Hasan Akhund is a Taliban veteran who was a close associate and political adviser to Mullah Omar, the founder of the movement and its first Supreme Leader.
A member of the group’s Supreme Council, he served as Deputy Foreign Minister in their previous regime, and was placed on a UN Security Council sanctions list connected to the “acts and activities” of the Taliban.
From Kandahar, he previously served as the Taliban Governor of the key province. He also served as Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister during the Taliban’s first stint in power in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
The United Nations said he had a reputation of having been “one of the most effective Taliban commanders”.
Abdul Ghani Baradar, Acting Deputy Prime Minister
Abdul Ghani Baradar, named as Deputy to Hasan, was born and raised in Kandahar, and like most Afghans, Baradar’s life was forever changed by the Soviet invasion of the country in the late 1970s, transforming him into a fighter.
He was believed to have fought side-by-side with Mullah Omar. The two would go on to found the Taliban movement in the early 1990s during the chaos and corruption of the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.
After the Taliban government was toppled in 2001 by US-led forces, Baradar is believed to have been among a small group of Taliban members who approached interim leader, Hamid Karzai, with a potential deal that would have seen the group recognise the new administration.
Arrested in Pakistan in 2010, Baradar was kept in custody until pressure from the United States saw him freed in 2018 and relocated to Qatar.
While in Qatar, Baradar was appointed head of the Taliban’s political office and oversaw the signing of the troop withdrawal agreement with the US.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, Acting Interior Minister
The son of a famed commander from the war against the Soviets, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has doubled as the Deputy Leader of the Taliban and head of the powerful Haqqani network.
The Haqqani network is a US-designated “terror group” long viewed as one of the most dangerous armed groups in Afghanistan.
It is infamous for its use of suicide bombers and is believed to have orchestrated some of the most high-profile attacks in Kabul over the years.
The network is also accused of assassinating top Afghan officials and holding kidnapped Western citizens for ransom, including US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in 2014.
Known for their independence, fighting acumen, and savvy business dealings, the Haqqanis are mainly based in eastern Afghanistan and hold considerable sway over the Taliban’s leadership council.
Mullah Yaqoob, Acting Defence Minister
The son of Taliban co-founder Mullah Omar, Mullah Yaqoob heads the group’s powerful military commission, which oversaw the vast network of field commanders charged with executing the rebellion.
On Tuesday, he was named as Defence Minister. Yaqoob’s father enjoyed cult-like status as the Taliban leader, and that potent lineage makes him a unifying figure in the movement.
Mawlawi Amir Khan Mutaqi, Acting Foreign Minister
Originally from Paktia province, Mutaqi calls himself a resident of Helmand. Mutaqi served as Minister of Culture and Information during the previous Taliban government, as well as Minister of Education.
Mutaqi was later sent to Qatar and was appointed a member of the peace commission and negotiation team that held talks with the United States.
Neither military commander nor religious leader, according to Taliban sources, Mutaqi is the chair of the Invitation and Guidance Commission, which, during the insurgency, had led efforts to get government officials and other key figures to defect.
In statements and speeches while fighting raged for control of the country, he projected a moderate voice, calling on forces holed up in provincial capitals to talk to the group to avoid fighting in urban areas.
In the weeks after the fall of Kabul, Mutaqi played a similar role with the lone holdout province of Panjshir, calling for a peaceful settlement to hostilities.
The Taliban on Tuesday announced a team of hardliners into its interim government in Afghanistan with key government roles shared among veterans of the militant group and its allies in the United States-sanctioned Haqqani Network.
The composition of the interim government was announced at a press conference by one of the group’s spokesmen in Kabul, the country’s capital.
Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a long-time Taliban member and a leader of the group’s Shura or Leadership Council for about two decades, was named the Prime Minister.
Akhund is seen as an influential member of the Taliban and highly respected on the religious side of the movement.
Mullah Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s political bureau, who led the Taliban delegation in peace talks in Qatar, was named the Deputy Prime Minister.
Two senior figures in the Haqqani Network were also named in the interim government with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the network’s leader, was appointed as the acting Interior Minister.
Haqqani has been one of Taliban’s two deputy leaders since 2016 and has a $10 million US bounty on his head.
Khalil Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s uncle, was appointed the acting Minister for Refugees.
An Afghanistan militant group, the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), has vowed to resist the new Taliban government if they refuse to embrace peace, saying it is ready to go to battle as they have enough men to take on the regime.
Speaking in an interview with the BBC on Monday, Head of Foreign Relations for NRF, Ali Nazary, said they were set for battle against the Taliban, stressing that no one would be allowed to conquer their land.
According to Nazary, they prefer peace through negotiation and if the Taliban fails to embrace peace, they would resort to using force.
“We prefer peace, we prioritise peace and negotiations. If this fails, if we see that the other side is not sincere, if we see that the other side is trying to force itself on the rest of the country, then we’re not going to accept any sort of aggression.
And we’ve proven ourselves, our track record in the past 40 years has shown that no one is able to conquer our region, especially the Panjshir Valley”, Nazary said.
The Taliban took over Kabul, the Afghanistan capital on August 15 after the United States withdrew its troops from the country and though they have been trying to form a new government, its fighters have been on the rampage, targeting citizens they believed had sympathy for US and the fallen regime, as well as making drastic decrees that many international political analysts say would push the country into a state of anarchy.
The Taliban has slammed what it terms the hypocrisy of branding the U.S. and Facebook as proponents of censorship of free speech after a question about the regime’s stance on freedom of expression.
This was in reaction to a question that was dismissed by the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on Tuesday.
“This question should be asked to those people who are claiming to be promoters of freedom of speech, who do not allow publication of all information,” Mujahid responded to a question about freedom of speech in the new government.
“I can ask the Facebook company. This question should be asked to them.”
Notably, the Taliban mentioned Facebook on censoring of free speech and not Twitter, which has permitted Taliban leaders to remain on the platform.
Facebook, however, issued a statement to the BBC that Taliban accounts will continue to be banned.
“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under U.S. law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies,” a Facebook spokesman told the BBC on Monday night.
“This means we remove accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and prohibit praise, support, and representation of them.”
We also have a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context, helping to identify and alert us to emerging issues on the platform.”
A senior member of the Taliban on Tuesday announced a general “amnesty” for everyone in the country and urged women to join the government, days after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, claimed on Afghan state television that women in Afghanistan had no reason to be afraid.
He said: “The Islamic Emirate doesn’t want women to be victims.” He added: “The structure of government is not fully clear, but based on experience, there should be a fully Islamic leadership and all sides should join.”
Samangani said that women “should be in the government structure according to Shariah law”.
Associated Press reported that this marked a departure from the last time the Taliban was in power when women were largely confined to their homes. And those who violated the Taliban’s rules faced flogging in public and execution.
In an earlier statement, the Taliban spokesperson Sohail Shaheen said that the reports of girls being sent home from schools in some parts of the country were not true.
Fawzia Koofi, a women’s rights activist and former lawmaker was quoted by NBC as saying “women in Afghanistan are the most at danger or most at-risk population of the country.”
Another Afghan woman, Nasreen Sultani, the principal of the Sardar-e-Kabuli Girls High School in Kabul was quoted as saying: “I am very sad. When I see all these girls, I get really upset now.”
She added: “I tried, but we couldn’t manage to make sure that women get out of this miserable situation,” Ms Sultani was threatened by the Taliban in the past.
It was also not clear what the Taliban meant by “amnesty”.
Other Taliban leaders have said that they won’t seek revenge on those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign countries, but there have been reports of recriminations already taking place.
Afghanistan faces massive uncertainty with the Taliban now in control of the country. Former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country on the day the group took over the presidential palace.
There was subsequent chaos and fear among many Afghan locals. Hundreds ran towards the international airport in Kabul and several clung to the wheels of a departing US military aircraft.
One disturbing video that was circulated online showed a few men falling to their death once the aeroplane took off.
Taliban fighters have taken over a television station in Afghanistan’s strategic Helmand province.
The Helmand TV and Radio station which are located in the city of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, is operated by state-run Radio and Television Afghanistan.
In a statement issued on Tuesday by its spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, Taliban confirmed its fighters had taken over the station and chased out its staff.
The incident came a few hours after the United States ramped up airstrikes against the Taliban in a bid to turn back the militants’ advances on a number of key provincial capitals in Afghanistan, a senior Afghan security official told journalists.
“Over the past three days, the US airstrikes have targeted Taliban positions around the cities of Herat, Kandahar, and Lashkar Gah.
“They strike multiple times when the Taliban try to enter the city,” the official said, adding that the three cities were considered “endangered” by Taliban advances.
US President Joe Biden is set to announce that American troops will leave Afghanistan by 11 September, officials have told US media.
The US would miss a May deadline for a pull-out agreed with the Taliban by the Trump administration last year.
The new deadline would coincide with the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the US in 2001.
Mr Biden had previously said the 1 May deadline would be tough to meet.
US and Nato officials have said the Taliban, a hardline Islamist movement, have so far failed to live up to commitments to reduce violence.
The Taliban have been warned that if they attack US troops during the pull-out phase, they “will be met with a forceful response”, said a senior administration official who was briefing reporters.
Mr Biden had decided a hasty withdrawal that would put US forces at risk was not a viable option, the official added.
At the same time, a review of US choices determined that now was the time to close the book on the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan to focus on more acute threats.
Mr Biden is due to make the announcement himself on Wednesday.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
