Taliban arresting women protesting education ban under pretext of ‘bad hijab’ law, say Afghan activists

Activists in Kabul say the Taliban is rounding up and detaining women and girls under the pretext a draconian law on improperly worn headscarves.

In the past week, women’s rights activist Farida Mohib said she had witnessed arrests of women on “an excessive scale” in the Afghan capital, in a crackdown which she said was designed to quash any last vestiges of protest in the country over a ban on women’s and girls’ education.

“I was in Makroyan neighbourhood on Sunday when the Taliban came in their [Ford] Ranger car and forced all the girls on the road into the back of the car and took them away,” said Ms Mohib.

Public dissent has become increasingly rare in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s rule and any such gatherings are met with brute force. “Lately in Kabul, there has been no street protest, the Taliban will shoot us directly or take us as prisoners with them,” said Ms Mohib, a member of the Women’s National Unity and Solidarity Movement in Afghanistan.

Ms Mohib says the regime’s fighters are picking women up off the streets, putting them inside vehicles, and whisking them away to unknown destinations in a crackdown that began on 1 January.

Some women have reportedly died by suicide, activists say.

The Taliban’s de facto authorities have not confirmed any deaths or a number of arrests made, but admitted that an operation to detain women was going on.

The Taliban’s chief spokesperson confirmed that the regime has been arresting women over improperly worn hijab – what is locally referred to as the “bad hijab” law – but did not specify how many are behind bars.

Women in Kabul have been asked to wear masks so that their faces are not seen. Chadors – a dress covering women from head to toe – of any colour other than black are also strictly barred.

The Taliban’s officials are now parading the streets stating that black chadors have to be worn with a mask and burqas of the same colour.

“These arrests were to punish some groups who were trying to promote violation of hijab in some cities, and it was for a limited time,” Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said. The statement was later removed from X.

Officials from the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Ministry said the arrested women were the “limited few who spread bad hijab in the Islamic society”.

“They violated Islamic values and rituals, and encouraged society and other respected sisters to go for bad hijab,” the ministry’s spokesperson Abdul Ghafar Farooq says.

Activists witnessing the arrests say the number of women behind bars could be in the hundreds.

“The number of girls taken by the Taliban is not known because there were many. It can be more than 200 because they are picking up girls and women from every area in their Ranger vehicles,” Ms Mohib said. Some activists were picked up while protesting in front of a school, she said.

Women protesters like her are now in hiding as they fear arrest.

“I am also sick with fear, I can’t even go to the hospital because if I leave the house they will take me away. The whole city is in a terrible state,” says Ms Mohib, who was previously detained by the Taliban in raids in August last year.

Another activist who protested in Kabul last week says the situation in the Afghan capital has worsened significantly in recent months as the world looks away.

“The only thing women could do in Afghanistan was step out in the market despite facing very difficult conditions and even getting beaten up by the Taliban. Now, women’s rights activists are no longer allowed to go out,” the activist tells The Independent on the condition of anonymity.

“Women are the only group that is currently standing against the Taliban. This is the reason for our arrests and beatings,” she says.

Taliban’s officials have also threatened families and demanded heavy financial sums for their release, activists said.

“When the male family members go to the Taliban’s police stations asking for the release of women protesters, they are being asked to pay for bail,” Mohib said.

The Taliban’s deputy head of the prison administration office on Tuesday said around 19,000 people are currently held in prisons across Afghanistan for various crimes. These also include 800 women, he said.

The Taliban seized power on 15 August 2021 as US and Nato forces withdrew from the country after two decades of war.

It has since put in place a series of dictats based on the group’s strict interpretation of Sharia law, enforced in public by marauding armed militants. With no effective opposition remaining in the country, women’s rights have suffered a severe blow.

What began with a ban on girls attending school beyond sixth grade has evolved into a flurry of restrictions that now keep Afghan girls and women from classrooms, most jobs, and much of public life.