By Ziba Balkhi
It was meant to be a regular market shopping day in Jawzjan’s provincial capital for Nilofar Langar, but it turned into a nightmare that has kept her avoiding the city ever since.
There’s fear and sadness in Nilofar’s eyes as she retells the story.
She had left home for Sheberghan city centre in the late afternoon around 5PM, trying to skip the peak of the summer heat. As she neared Atayi Market, she noticed seven members of the Taliban standing on the road ahead, three of them dressed in the distinct black turban, white shalwar kameez and dark vest of the Vice and Virtue police.
The 26-six-year-old stopped on the path as the men blocked her way and one of the men asked where she was going.
“As usual. I had on my chapan, which was long, I had put on my face mask, and my hijab. I went to the city to shop,” she tells Rukhshana Media. “Because of the fear of the Taliban, I don’t go to the city much.
Nilofar replied to the Talib that she was headed to the city market. “One of them asked, ‘Why don’t you have a mask?’ I pointed to my mask, ‘Can’t you see? Isn’t it a mask?’ He said, ‘We won’t let you go to the city’.”
“They insulted me a lot. They said dirty, disgraceful things, and many ugly words that I cannot express. But after that, one of them wanted to hold my hand! I said to him, When you were talking about Islam, did Allah say that a man who’s not a mahram (chaperone) can hold a woman’s hand in the middle of the city and in front of so many men and women? He lifted his gun and said, ‘I will shoot you’.”
And that’s when the beating started.
Nilofar claims the Talib struck her with the buutt of his gun. “He hit both of my feet so hard that it was burning and painful for a week,” she said. “They kicked me on the right and left leg with frequent hits. The pain lasted a week.”
In the photos seen by Rukhshana Media, bruises are evident on both her legs.
“The pain and wounds disappeared, but the suffering in my heart will never go away,” she says.
One month on, Nilofar has not dared to return to the city. She said she struggles with a kind of trauma that she is finding hard to overcome. “I’ve locked myself in my house like a prisoner,” she says. “When I hear the Taliban’s name, I only remember that day and how they brutally beat me.”
Nilofar’s story is not rare. A mounting number of girls and women have reported being accosted by the Taliban in the street. The excuse is always made out to be something they are wearing.
In April, the Taliban announced that females in Afghanistan must cover their face, bodies, and even eyes. The Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice decreed that women should use veils that completely cover their faces. Those who fail to comply not only risk being punished, but male relatives of girls and women who are found to be non-compliant will also be punished.
The decree stated:
“In the first stage, the house of the woman who doesn’t adhere to the clothing order will be identified and advised and punished. In the second stage, those women and girls will be summoned to the Vice and Virtue office. Third, the guardian of that woman will be imprisoned for three days. In the fourth stage, he will be delivered to the court and sentenced to an appropriate punishment.”
Since the decree, complaints about the mistreatment of women by the morality police have persistently increased.
Medina* has been as a civil activist and women’s rights activist for 10 years in Jawzjan province. She said in the past month, many women have reported being beaten and abused in Sheberghan for alleged clothing offences.
Medina says there are new Taliban checkpoints in the city. “They even check inside the cars so that no woman is without the [full] hijab,” she says. “There have been days when they beat the drivers because the women was not wearing a the burqa or the veil [over her face].”
She believes that ultimate goal for the Taliban is to remove women from the public sphere. “In some smaller provinces, there are more restrictions on women and the Taliban take more serious action to enforce it,” she says.
“The situation of women in Jawzjan province is very worrying, especially in the last month. Women cannot even walk in the bazaar with this group’s ideas around the mandatory hijab.”
An extra layer of concern has been the Taliban using the loudspeakers of mosques to remind people of their decrees and warn women not to walk in the city except when strictly necessary.
“At the end of the preaching every Friday, they announce that women should observe the Islamic hijab. Women should only go to the city if necessary. Women should not go sightseeing in the city,” she said.
Medina says that the Taliban has even warned the shopkeepers not to buy and sell to women who are not wearing a burqa. “One of my friends went to the city to shop but was not wearing a burqa, and the Taliban did not allow her to do so,” she said. “They told her, go get a burqa first and come back to buy. They also told the shopkeeper, You have no right to sell anything to this lady until she wears a burqa.”
It is not the first time this form of harassment has been recorded. The Taliban in Balkh province have similarly prohibited some shopkeepers from selling goods to women who don’t wear something akin to a burqa.
Sheberghan resident Shaista, said one of her friends and her friend’s brother was also beaten by the Taliban over her friend’s clothing.
The 18-year-old said her friend was being insulted and humiliated at a Taliban checkpoint for her clothing. When the Talibs began to strike her, her brother tried to defend her and he also received blows. “They beat him even more,” Shaista said. “They hit him with the butt of the gun to the point that it broke her brother’s hand. He had to go to hospital to her it plastered.”
Similar stories of harassment are being shared by women in provinces across Afghanistan, with many increasingly choosing to stay home if they can avoid it.
