By Azada Tran
It’s been more than a year since 19-year-old Zainab and her three cousins have been forbidden from leaving the house alone.
They now only go out when a male relative can accompany them, and they always cover themselves in a long black hijab.
“Life is very difficult for me; my family doesn’t allow me to go anywhere because of the Taliban,” she says.
“My father and brother say I must stay at home and not go out because the situation is bad. I’ve stopped moving forward. I feel heartbroken because all my dreams are now shattered.”
Zainab’s education stopped at eighth grade.
“Since the day the Taliban arrived, I was unable to go to school,” she says.
“I wanted to become an English teacher.”
Zainab says that she has asked her father if she could attend English classes several times, but his response was to physically assault her.
“Last year, I went to the course for a semester without telling my father. When he found out, he beat me twice with a stick and an electric wire. After that, I just do embroidery and housework at home,” she says.
It’s a quietly devastating story that has become all too common across Afghanistan.
The list of human rights violations imposed on girls and women by the Taliban is long – and continues to grow.
Among its first decrees in 2021, the Taliban banned girls from attending high school and university, banned women from many forms of employment, and dissolved the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
It set up the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which enforces extreme controls on how women dress, behave and move in society.
On May 7, 2022, the Taliban issued a decree requiring women and girls to cover their faces in public places and restricted their ability to leave the house except in non-essential situations.
Human rights activists and organizations consistently called for the Taliban to roll back these restrictions and expressed grave concerns for the consequences.
Human Rights Watch stated that the Taliban had effectively turned men into “jailers” of the women in their families and “to become complicit in the abuse of women”. A Taliban decree stated that if women and girls defied the orders, the male head of their household would face punishment, including imprisonment.
The Taliban’s restrictions have made their way into remote regions.
Twenty-year-old Najia lives in a mountainous area of the Yakawlang district in Bamyan province.
Najia says that after she was banned from attending, she opened a small shop in the district’s market, selling women’s clothing – one of the few jobs still available to women.
“The Taliban morality police [from the Ministry of Vice and Virtue] would always come and enter my shop, telling me that women are not allowed to run businesses and that my hijab was not correct. They would find fault with everything, and it was very difficult.”
Finally, out of fear the Taliban’s harassment would get them in trouble, Najia’s family stopped her from working and arranged for her to be married.
“We always wore clothes according to the Taliban’s instructions, but still, my father would forbid us from going outside, fearing that the Taliban would take us and imprison us,” she says.
“As you know, a girl in the villages is always under the control of her family. After the Taliban began detaining girls in Kabul, my father stopped me and my sisters from working outside and decided that anyone who came to propose to me or my sisters should be married off to us.
That came soon after for Najia, who was married this year.
“I could no longer work or study, and I couldn’t even wear my favorite clothes. So when our families decided that we should leave the house with a good reputation, I accepted the marriage.”
The Taliban’s crackdown on girls and women in public was achieved under the pretext of them not wearing the hijab properly. Reports of mass arrests first began in Kabul in December 2023 but soon spread to other cities.
Then verified reports emerged of extreme abuse, including deliberate sexual abuse to shame and silence women, occurring in the Taliban’s prisons and detention centers.
Alongside numerous anecdotal accounts and published news reports, it was confirmed by the United Nations.
On Monday November 7, the United Nations published a report from UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan Richard Bennett stating that some women in Taliban prisons have been subjected to rape and sexual assault.
The effect is in line with the Taliban’s goal of ensuring girls and women remain at home.
Parwin is studying nursing at a private institute in Kabul, but says her family is constantly terrified for her.
“My family is worried when they send me outside to study because, since last year, the vice and virtue ministry has been arresting girls under the pretext of an improper hijab,” the 24-year-old says.
“Even though I fully observe the hijab, my family is still afraid that one day I might be arrested or beaten by the Taliban for a bad hijab.”
For 22-year-old Soraya*, her mother has meticulously made special clothes for the obstetrician-gynecologist and her sister to wear.
“Every time we go outside, we wear those. Without a doubt, our family is worried that either we or they might be harassed by the Taliban.”
Soraya says the only reason her family has not prevented her from stopping work completely is because of financial difficulties.
In Ghazni province, the stories are much the same.
For sisters Maryam*, 17, and Masooma*, 15, their family has stopped them from attending the English language and painting courses they picked up after school stopped.
Maryam has only achieved ninth grade and Masooma sixth grade.
Now they attend a madrassa in Ghazni city where they study a primarily religious syllabus.
Masooma chokes up in tears when asked about attending the madrassa.
“I don’t like going to school and studying religious subjects at all, but my parents force me to go because they believe it’s safer there, and the Taliban won’t interfere,” she says.
The sisters’ mother Sediqa*, 45, says her fear of the Taliban forced her to send them to a religious school.
“Last year, we heard every day about the Taliban taking girls off the road because of their hijab. Because of this, we were afraid, so I didn’t send my two daughters to their courses,” she says.
“But this year I enrolled them in a religious school. At least they won’t remain uneducated and the Taliban don’t interfere with school students.”
Note: Names are changed due to security reasons.
