No education beyond sixth standard. Most workplaces have no employment and no access to public spaces such as parks, gyms and salons. Do not travel long distances if not accompanied by a male relative. Don’t leave the house if you are not covered from head to toe.
And now, a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan, according to a 114-page manifesto released late last month that codifies all Taliban government edicts restricting women’s rights.
Most of the restrictions have been in place in the three years the Taliban have been in power, gradually pushing Afghan women out of public life. But for many women across the country, the release of the document feels like the nail in the coffin for their dreams and aspirations.
After Taliban officials suggested that high schools and universities would eventually be reopened to women after they were closed, some were clinging to hope that authorities could reverse the most severe restrictions yet. For many women, that hope is now dashed.
“We are going back to the first regime of the Taliban, when women did not have the right to leave the house,” said Musrat Faramarz, 23, a woman from Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan, referring to the movement’s rule since 1996. 2001. “I Thought the Taliban Had Changed, But We’re Reliving the Darkness of the Past.”
Since the Taliban regained power in August 2021, authorities have systematically rolled back the rights that women – especially in less conservative urban centers – won during 20 years of US occupation. Today, Afghanistan is the most restrictive country in the world for women, and the only country that bans high school education for girls, experts say.
The publication of the rules has ignited fears of an impending crackdown by zealous officers of the so-called vice and virtue police, government officials who wear white robes and are stationed on street corners to ensure compliance with the country’s morality laws.
The manifesto defines for the first time the enforcement mechanisms that can be used by these authorities. While they have repeatedly issued verbal warnings, those officers are now empowered to damage people’s property or detain them for up to three days if they repeatedly violate the vice and virtue laws.
Before the law was announced, Freshta Nasimi, a 20-year-old resident of Badakhshan province in northeastern Afghanistan, held on to any hope she could find.
For a while, she survived a rumor she heard from classmates that the government would televise a girls’ school—a concession that would allow girls to learn in their homes. But that dream was dashed after authorities in Khost province in the country’s east banned such programs from the airwaves earlier this year. It hints that other parts of the country may implement similar restrictions.
Now, Ms. Nasimi says, she is stuck at home. A new law excluding women’s voices—considered an intimate part of a woman that must be covered—effectively ensured that she could not leave home without a male relative. She worries that no taxi driver will talk to her for fear of being reprimanded by the Taliban, she said, and no shopkeeper will entertain her requests.
She admits that her aspirations to become an engineer – with a steady income and independence – are over.
“My future?” she asked, resigned. “I have no future but to be a housewife and raise children.”
Analysts say the promulgation of the vice and virtue laws is part of a government effort to codify the operations of every ministry so that they adhere to the extreme vision of Sharia law instituted by Taliban leader Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada. Analysts say the document is intended to remove any Western principles from the US-backed government running Afghanistan before the Taliban return to power.
The Taliban have strongly resisted outside pressure to ease restrictions on women, even as the policies have alienated Afghanistan from much of the West. Taliban officials defend the law as rooted in Islamic teachings governing the country. “Afghanistan is an Islamic nation; Islamic laws naturally apply in its society,” government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement.
But the rules have drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan. The head of the mission, Roza Otunbayeva, called them “a sad vision for the future of Afghanistan” that expands the “already intolerable restrictions” on women’s rights.
Visual signs of femininity have also been gradually removed from the public sphere.
Over the past three years, the women’s faces have been ripped from advertisements on billboards, painted in murals on school walls and scrawled on posters on city streets. The heads of female mannequins, wearing black, all-concealing abayas, are covered with tinfoil.
Even before the new declaration, the threat of vice and reprimands by the moral police lingered in the air as women were barred from more and more public places.
“I live at home like a prisoner,” said Ms. Faramarz, a woman from Baghlan. “I haven’t left the house in three months,” she added.
Reversing rights was perhaps most difficult for girls who came of age during the U.S. occupation, an era of opportunity for women.
Some girls, determined to continue with their education, have found ad hoc ways to do so. Underground schools for girls, often no more than a few dozen students and a teacher tucked away in people’s private homes, have sprung up across the country. Others are turning to online classes, even as the Internet ebbs and flows.
Almost a year after the Taliban seized power, 18-year-old Mohadisa Hassani started studying again. She spoke with two former classmates who had moved to the United States and Canada. Hearing about the school they were studying at first made him jealous. But then she saw an opportunity, she said.
She asked those friends to spend an hour each week teaching physics and chemistry lessons. She woke up at 6 a.m. to calls and spent days poring over textbook photos sent by friends, Meena and Mursad.
“Some of my friends are painting, they’re writing, they’re doing underground taekwondo classes,” Ms Hassani said. “Our depression is always there, but we have to be brave.”
“I love Afghanistan, I love my country. I just don’t like the government and people forcing their beliefs on others,” she added.
Classes and artistic outlets, though informal, give girls, especially in more progressive cities, a dose of hope and purpose. But the reach of those programs only goes so far.
Rahmanini, 43, who preferred to give only her surname for fear of reprisals, said she started taking sleeping pills every night to ease the anxiety she felt about providing for her family.
A widow, Ms. Rahmani worked for nonprofit groups for nearly 20 years before the Taliban seized power, earning more than enough for her four children. Now, she says, after women are barred from working for such groups she can not only provide for them – but she has also lost her sense of self.
“I miss the days when I was somebody, when I could work and earn a living and serve my country,” Ms. Rahmani explained. “They have erased our presence from society.”
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