How women defy the Taliban

A veiled woman walks past a beauty parlour. The faces of the women on the adverts on the wall are painted over in black. — Beauty parlours were the target of attacks immediately after the Taliban's return to power. Kabul in August 2021. Photo: H. Sabawoon / Anadolu Agency

Afghan women are developing sophisticated forms of protest to defend themselves against intensifying Taliban repression. Fundamentalists can do little to stop the resistance.

By Emran Feroz

“We women will free ourselves from this prison,” sing two veiled Afghan women with determination in their voices, “we will free ourselves from this cage.” Those words are heard in one of many videos that have recently been making the rounds on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms within and outside Afghanistan.

More than three years since the return of the Taliban in 2021, extremists announced new “virtue laws” this summer, primarily aimed at Afghan women, which have fueled the increasing gender apartheid in the country. The new regulations forbid Afghan women from doing many things, including speaking or singing loudly in public.

Many women reacted promptly to the repression and shared videos of themselves singing. While women from the diaspora showed their faces, those who continue to live in Afghanistan took part in the campaign anonymously. One video, for example, shows a young woman walking through the streets of Kabul singing, presumably as Taliban soldiers patrol in her immediate vicinity. The message is clear: Afghan women cannot be made invisible.

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Since the rebirth of the Taliban emirate in August 2021, everyday life for Afghan girls and women has been bleak. For over 1000 days, Afghan women have been banned from attending secondary schools. A university ban was added at the end of 2022.

There are also numerous restrictions on work; on Afghan television, virtually no women are allowed in front of the camera. All broadcasters in the country are forced to submit to the Taliban. They are monitored, threatened and censored. The new laws, personally ordered by Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, have effectively denied women the right to act independently in public.

Mobility has also been restricted. Girls and women are no longer permitted to visit public parks or move around without a mahram (an adult male companion). Taxi drivers who offer unaccompanied women a lift can expect to be fined.

Beauty salons forced to close

A year ago, tens of thousands of beauty salons were closed, partly because the Taliban equated them with brothels. “I’m trying to make ends meet as a seamstress,” says Khatera*, a make-up artist from Kabul, over the phone as Afghan classical music plays in the background.

A year ago, Khatera was forced to close her salon due to the Taliban decree. Until then, salons were one of the last places where women could earn money independently. Khatera had several female employees who were able to support their families with their wages. The salons were also considered a safe space.

Shortly after the closure, Khatera began working from home. At first, it went well, she was able to rely on some of her regular customers. In the meantime, her shop sits empty. “I had to close again six months ago. There were simply no more customers.”

The return of the morality ministry

All these regulations are enforced by the Taliban’s morality police, who do not operate uniformly throughout the country. They are under the authority of the so-called Ministry of Virtue and Vice, colloquially referred to as amr bil-ma'ruf. The ministry was re-established by the Taliban after their re-seizure of power, and it operates as a de facto ministry of morality that intrudes into many areas of life.

British-Afghan analyst Ahmed Waleed-Kakar points out that amr bil-ma'ruf is not a pure Taliban invention: “The ministry is not a Taliban creation. Like many other institutions in the country, it has experienced a lot of turbulence over the last forty years. Depending on who was in charge, it was institutionalised, abolished and reintroduced in the context of power struggles between secular elites and conservative-religious traditionalists.” The ministry was last abolished after the fall of the Taliban at the end of 2001.

Alongside the moral police, the GDI (General Directorate of Intelligence), the secret service of the Taliban regime, plays an important role, especially in controlling social media. It now has detailed databases of target persons from the media and civil society. “The Taliban's security forces are potentially omnipresent”, explains Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analyst Network (AAN) think tank. “Expressions of resistance are restricted to social media and to private spaces where people are still able to meet. But even this could be stopped, for example, if the Taliban step up surveillance in neighbourhoods,” he explains.

Students hold up posters in a protest against a law banning women from attending university. — Women protest against laws preventing them from studying at university, Kabul, December 2021. Photo: B. Guler / Anadolu Agency

According to Ruttig, the returned rulers are finding it particularly difficult to ban women from the public sphere in Kabul. Nevertheless, Ruttig does not expect a broader resistance, as this would be too dangerous to maintain in the long term. Like other observers, he fears an increasing media blockade, including on social media. So far, platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Facebook have not been blocked but are already heavily monitored.

But the fact that Afghans like Khatera or the singing women can reach the whole world within a few minutes presents a virtually insurmountable challenge for the Taliban. When the extremists first came to power in the 1990s, very little news emerged from the isolated country. Today, the opposite is true. Just a few days ago, several Afghan women shared “parking tickets” on X that they had received from the Taliban. The reason: they were travelling without a male escort.

“At some point you get tired”

The dangers of activism and criticism of the regime have been demonstrated time and time again in recent months. Several female activists have been arrested, interrogated and, according to various reports, sexually abused by the Taliban. According to the women’s network Azadi-e Zan, Afghan women in Taliban custody have been victims of sexual violence and torture.

Though it is a known fact that the Taliban’s prisons are now full of critics, demonstrators, journalists and other activists, it is impossible to assess the actual circumstances on the ground, as independent observers are denied access. In August, the Taliban even denied entry to the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett.

This is probably why many Afghans are far from optimistic. “At some point you get tired. You’re scared and intimidated,” explains Mustafa*, a student from Kabul. The Taliban’s rules of etiquette apply to men like him too—and he has been abiding by them for years. He used to wear jeans, shirts in a westernised style, and a shaved head. It was a small, personal protest against the Taliban regime. “I have no problem with a full beard and traditional dress. But I don’t like it when it’s forced on me,” he says.

But then, the pressure at university became too great. Anyone who disobeyed the Taliban was harassed and intimidated by the morality police. “It just wasn’t possible any more,” says Akbari, who now regrets not having left Afghanistan in recent years. Unlike many other young people who now live in Europe or the USA, he did not give his money to smugglers, but invested it into his education. But now he doubts his two bachelor’s degrees in the Taliban emirate will be of any use.

*Names changed to protect anonymity.