One of the few remaining female surgeons at a major hospital in western Afghanistan was prevented from entering and detained for several hours on Monday, her husband said, as a draconian new Taliban requirement for all women to wear the all-covering burqa sparked anger and chaos.
Shabnam Fazli’s husband said in a social media post that his wife was held in custody after trying to enter the Herat Regional Hospital. Taliban forces have for days been aggressively turning women away from the hospital for not wearing either the billowing garment, which covers the entire body and face, with only a grille to see out of.
He didn’t give a reason for her detention, but it came as a new requirement to wear either a burqa or Arabic-style abaya with a face covering was being aggressively enforced outside hospitals and government buildings and on public transport in Herat.
Since it was introduced last Wednesday, women seeking treatment have been turned away from hospitals because they weren’t wearing the burqa, while access to government services has also been affected, causing widespread distress and triggering protest.
One woman said she waited outside a government office for hours trying to get her identity card processed, before being turned away. “They [the Taliban] come up with a new problem every day,” she told Rukhshana Media. “The other day, the internet was cut off; now, they say you can’t have your documents processed without a burqa.”
At least four sources in Herat confirmed to Rukhshana Media that Taliban officers were stationed at the entrances of the main administrative complex, the provincial Department of Education, and the Herat Regional Hospital to enforce the decree
The ban’s enforcement at the Herat Regional Hospital has drawn particular outrage. On November 5 and 6, Taliban officers prevented both sick women and female doctors without burqas from entering the hospital. Videos from the scene show women pleading for access, some carrying babies in their arms. In one clip, a Taliban officer at the hospital gate lashes a woman with a whip after an argument, shouting, “Do you think I can’t whip you?” In another, a mother holding her infant begs, “Do you mean our children should die? Why won’t you let us into the hospital?”
A middle-aged woman who had travelled from another district to visit her ill niece said she tried multiple times to enter but was repeatedly blocked. “I’ve been here since morning, but they won’t let me in,” she said.
The restriction also applies to female employees in Taliban-run offices. “Yesterday at noon, they told us to go and buy burqas, but we didn’t take it seriously,” said one government worker. “This morning, when we came to work, they didn’t let us in and said we must wear one.”
The Taliban’s morality police have extended these restrictions to other areas of daily life. Drivers of city transport have reportedly been ordered not to allow women without burqas to board their vehicles. Shopkeepers, too, have been instructed not to let “any woman enter a store without a burqa or an Arabic-style abaya with a face covering.” Just weeks earlier, women were barred from entering Herat’s popular “Friday Market” on the city’s 64-Metre Road.
The new restrictions mark a further escalation in the Taliban’s campaign to erase women from public spaces, leaving many in Herat—both patients and professionals—trapped between the need for essential services and the regime’s coercive dress-code enforcement.
The Taliban have for some years required women to cover themselves from head to foot, and many in Herat wear the Iranian-style manto—a long coat and headscarf combination officially accepted as hijab in neighbouring Iran, which also imposes strict dress requirements on women.
Taliban officers appeared to favour the Arabic-style abaya and niqab, which covers the entire body except for the eyes, or the blue chadari—a burqa of South Asian origin that became widespread during their first rule in the late 1990s. That suggests not just a tightening of restrictions on women, but also on local cultural practices. The Taliban’s roots are in southern Afghanistan, which does not share Herat’s deep cultural, linguistic, and migratory links to Iran.
