By Raha Azad
Salima* was returning home with friends from an outing during the second day of Eid-al-Fitr in June when they were accosted by a middle-aged man. He was dressed in white and walking along the same road on the outskirts of Faizabad city in northern Badakhshan province with a woman in a burqa.
Salima, 24, suspected he was a member of the “morality police” – the term for enforcers of strict codes of behaviour and dress connected to the Taliban’s Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
“When he saw us walking by the wheat field, he approached us, calling out: ‘You 20-year-old girls have ruined the world! This is not Europe or America where you can roam without a hijab like this. Curse upon your parents. Your existence is worthless because you are impure’.”
Salima was wearing a hijab covering her hair and neck. She was not wearing a burqa.
The man picked up a rock from the ground and threw it at them.
“The stone hit my right hand, and I felt pain,” Salima said.
Tears fall down Salima’s face as she retells the story. It’s not the pain in her hand nor the words from the older man. It’s a culmination of frequent interactions like these and being powerless to stop them.
“How can a woman not have any bitter memories with these vice and virtue police? They have turned into nightmares in my life. Every time I come face to face with one of them and they look at me, I feel like I’ve committed a grave sin,” Salima said.
She struggles with a depression brought on by the monotony of days and being homebound since the Taliban banned women from attending university and education centers. Brief moments outside the home are equally fraught, filled with anxiety of interactions with a member of the Taliban.
A couple of months earlier, Salima had gone for a walk with her mother outside. Her mother had been told to walk daily to support her diabetes treatment and address her troubling weight gain, while Salima had hoped to alleviate her own mental distress with the spring air.
At Faizabad’s Dasht-e-Qargh intersection, two members of the morality police approached them, accusations flying.
“One of them said to my mother, ‘Why have you come out with this young woman this morning? Don’t you have any shame or modesty?’” Salima said.
Her mother began to respond, explaining how she needed to walk due to illness. But they only shamed them further.
“You came out for fun; illness is just an excuse. You come here to roam around because there are boys and men here, and you take pictures with them,” Salima said the man told them.
The mother and daughter fell silent, unable to defend themselves.
Salima no longer feels safe in her hometown.
Cultural change being enforced by control and abuse
Before the Taliban took power in August 2021, many girls and women would walk on Faizabad’s green and tranquil streets, especially alongside the Kokcha River, without being harassed.
But now the Taliban de facto authorities have effectively banned women from walking for exercise in the streets and its morality police enforce it with abuse, if not outright detainment.
Faizabad resident Fatima* says that on the third day of Eid, she and her friends were reprimanded for not wearing burqas by morality police in the city’s police district 6 Dasht-e Qargh area.
The men in white approached them with jibes about their intentions for showing their faces and cast aspersions on their morality.
“Why don’t you stay home so that someone with honor and dignity can come and propose to you? Instead, you wear makeup and come out to find a man,” Fatima said the men told them.
In a culture where modesty is paramount and women have no power to defend themselves, the accusations deliberately belittle and shame women who have no recourse to fight back.
Younger generation punished for Afghanistan’s democracy years
Nadia* found herself surrounded by three morality police on a recent visit to a shop for personal hygiene products in Faizabad’s Shahr-e-Kohna area.
“Why aren’t you wearing a burqa? You come here to show yourselves to others. You infidels and the democracy generation will never become upright people,” Nadia says one of the three men said to her.
The 21-year-old said she was wearing a long black and flowing dress with a hijab and face mask. Only her eyes were showing.
“One of the morality police said, ‘You need to be beaten with a stick to observe the Islamic hijab’,” Nadia said.
“The democracy generation” is a term being used by Taliban members as an insult to those who oppose any Taliban restrictions. It’s a reference to the relative freedoms the Afghan population had, especially women, before the Taliban came to power.
In almost three years of rule in Afghanistan, the Taliban have issued more than 70 specific decrees imposing restrictions against women. Accusations of improper dress has been a key cause of countless detentions of girls and women around the country.
Badakhshan in Afghanistan’s far north has not seen women jailed in large numbers like in Kabul, but there are countless stories of verbal torment and harassment.
Impact of verbal abuse and shame is long lasting
Mental health is deteriorating among the women and girls who are dealing with psychological distress of being forced to stay home and then facing the prospect of being abused and shamed by powerful men if they go outside.
Twenty-four years old Bahara* says the bitter humiliation she experienced nearly two years ago still affects her.
At the time, universities were open to women and Bahara was a second-year economics student. One morning as she entered her university, two morality police officers stopped her and three classmates in front of the gate, reprimanding them for their clothing.
“They told us we weren’t wearing a burqa and hadn’t correctly observed Islamic hijab. They said, ‘This is a place of Islamic morals and etiquette, not a brothel where you can wear any clothes you want and come as you wish’,” she said the men told them.
Then, the group was denied entry to the university and couldn’t attend their classes.
Some sources who spoke on condition of anonymity say the Taliban’s morality police in Badakhshan are stationed throughout almost every corner of society including in government offices, open streets, recreational parks, and other public places. The sources said the primary mission is to monitor women’s attire and behavior and they are given broad discretion to take any approach they see fit.
“For twenty years, Westerners and NATO ruled in Afghanistan and imposed their thoughts on the people. Now it’s time for you to reform the thoughts of the people,” the Taliban’s Minister of Vice and Virtue has previous said in a speech addressing his officers about their task ahead.
Note*: Names are changed due to security reasons.
