The Taliban’s vice and virtue police have verbally instructed women-led coffee shops in Herat to cease operations, local sources in the province told Rukhshana Media.
One of the cafe owners, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her male colleagues were instructed on Monday, November 18, to close the women’s section and dismiss all female staff members.
Latte, Black, Tabeeat, Night, and Gram are five women-owned cafes in Herat city.
“Since this was a verbal order, we did not comply and continued our activities. However, the Gram and Night cafes ceased operations, though the Gram cafe reopened on Thursday,” the owner of the cafes said.
“The activities of my cafe do not contradict any law or tradition. We do not play music, women and girls enter fully covered, and no tobacco products are sold in our cafe,” one of the owners said.
As the breadwinner of her family, she is deeply concerned about the consequences of her cafe’s closure.
“I have invested one million and five hundred thousand Afghanis ($22,000) in this cafe. If it shuts down, I have no hope of starting again,” she said.
In October, the Taliban closed women’s art workshops in Herat, citing the presence of co-education and the participation of women without male chaperones as the reasons behind the shutdown.
