Afghanistan's Taliban-led government has arrested dozens of women for failing to observe its strict dress code, which requires women to wear head-to-toe coverings, including over their faces.
Several eyewitnesses and some of the women detained told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that officials from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice have been making the arrests in various neighborhoods of the capital, Kabul, since January 1.
“There have been several incidents today in which the Taliban detained several women and took them to an unknown destination,” one eyewitness who requested anonymity said on January 3.
In May 2022, a decree by the Taliban, who seized power in August 2020 as international troops were withdrawing from the country, called on Afghan women to only show their eyes in public.
The order reinstated restrictions during the Taliban’s previous rule between 1996 and 2001. It is even stricter than neighboring Iran, where authorities have enforced the mandatory hijab, or Islamic head scarf, for decades, prompting widespread unrest.
The AP quoted the country's Vice and Virtue Ministry as saying women are being arrested for wearing "bad hijab," the first official confirmation of a crackdown on women who don’t follow the dress code.
A young woman who witnessed some detentions in Kabul said she managed to escape arrest after an older man intervened.
“He told me to run to run towards my house because the Taliban had just arrested several women in the neighborhood of Dasht-e Barchi in western Kabul,” she told Radio Azadi.
Some of the women detained were released on bail, while others are still being held by the Taliban.
The crackdown is the latest blow to women and girls in Afghanistan, who are already being marginalized in the country by Taliban bans on education, employment, and restrictions in access to public spaces.
Ruqiya Saee, a women's rights activist, said Afghan women are no longer able to dress the way they like.
“The situation in Afghanistan is becoming dire daily," she told Radio Azadi.
The arrests come days after the UN Security Council called for a special envoy to engage with the Taliban, especially on gender and human rights.
The Taliban, however, criticized the idea, saying that special envoys have “complicated situations further via the imposition of external solutions.”
On January 3, the United States supported the new UN special envoy for Afghanistan.
Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said Washington remained concerned about the Taliban’s “repressive edicts against women and girls and its unwillingness to foster inclusive governance."
He added that the decisions made by the Taliban risk irreparable damage to Afghan society and move the Taliban further away from normalizing relations with the international community.