Rukhshana Media
Since taking over the country, the Taliban have issued several decrees to implement the Taliban’s understanding of Sharia Law. These decrees, mainly aimed at regulating women’s social conduct and clothing. Yet they are also becoming a problem for street vendors, shopkeepers, and businesses.
The Taliban’s Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or the Taliban’s moral police, is the main authority in charge of issuing the most restrictive and repressive decrees.
In late December, the ministry banned women from traveling farther than 78 km without a close male relative and made “hijab” compulsory for women using transport.
In early January, the ministry’s local office in Herat banned women without male chaperones from entering cafes. A week before that, it ordered shopkeepers and businesses to behead “store mannequins” and avoid using banners and posters which are “against Islamic Sharia.”
Now street vendors and shopkeepers in two provinces, Kabul and Jawzjan, have told Rukhshana Media that Taliban soldiers have reprimanded them for selling and displaying women western-style and underwear in public, calling it “against Islamic Sharia.” They said the Taliban soldiers had threatened them with arrest to extort bribes from them for selling and displaying the clothes they deem “unIslamic.”
“The Taliban [soldiers] are reprimanding us for selling women’s underwear,” Mohammad, a street vendor in Kabul, told Rukhshana Media.
“Why do you sell underwear?” He remembers a Taliban soldier asking him in one of their two visits. “Let people buy food with that money,” the soldier responded to his own question before Juma could say anything.
Mohammad says the Taliban threatened to arrest him if he continued to sell women’s underwear. He claims to have paid 5000 Afghani to the Taliban soldiers.
Abbas, another street vendor, hides women’s underwear on display when the Taliban gunmen visit his shop. “I may consider selling something else instead of women’s underwear because, with paying [bribe to] the Taliban, it is not worth it anymore,” he told Rukhshana Media.
However, the ministry’s spokesman, Sadeq Akif Muhajir, denied issuing a decree banning the sale of women’s underwear in public.
In the northern province of Jawzjan, the Taliban ordered shopkeepers to “behead” ‘store mannequins’ and stop selling women’s western style of clothing such as pants, blouse, shirts, and underwear, according to two shopkeepers in Sheberghan, the capital of Jawzjan.
A few weeks ago, four Taliban soldiers who introduced themselves from the Virtue and Vice ministry entered a mall in Sheberghan where Hafiz, a shopkeeper, owns a clothing store. “They quickly scanned all the stores in the mall, and one of them angrily pointed his finger at the women’s dresses, blouse, shirts, and underwear and said ‘don’t import and sell western-style clothes,’” Hafiz told Rukhshana Media in a phone interview.
Some of the shopkeepers went to the Taliban’s office, asking them to spare the mannequin’s head because it cost $100 each, according to Hafiz.
He said the Taliban officials agreed to waive the beheading on the condition that shopkeepers cover the mannequin’s head.
Aziz, another shopkeeper in the same mall in Sheberghan, said most shopkeepers are too scared to confront the Taliban, and they are often forced to accept the Taliban’s order.
“There were around 400 shops in the mall, but since the Taliban’s new restriction on clothes and mannequins, more than 50 stores had already closed,” he added.
The new restrictions came into place as the country is facing the worst economic and humanitarian crisis, bringing 98 % of Afghanistan’s population to the brink of famine, according to the UN.
