In light of an observed crackdown in Kabul, a Taliban representative has confirmed the recent detention of numerous girls and women who were allegedly not conforming to the stipulated dress standards.
Security official Ehsanullah Saqib, in a video shared on social media on Wednesday, informed a gathering of religious scholars in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood that, with the assistance of women police, they had detained women and girls not wearing hijab over the past week.
The Taliban, since regaining power in August 2021, has imposed a strict interpretation of Islam, leading to a disproportionate impact on women and earning condemnation from the United Nations as “gender apartheid.”
Women have been systematically excluded from public life, restricted from traveling without a male relative, and mandated to conceal everything except their hands and eyes when outside their homes. However, in Kabul, many women still venture out without covering their mouths.
Ehsanullah, addressing the gathering on Tuesday according to the video posted on X by Khaama Press and Amu TV, said the women and girls were detained because they were “totally without hijab”, wearing trousers or leggings and dresses, instead of a garment that loosely covers the whole body.
‘They were arrested to inform their families that their sister, daughter or wife roams without hijab and they should prevent this,’ he said.
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Abdul Ghafar Sabawoon, spokesman for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, told AFP the women had ‘only been advised by female police to have greater respect and dignity (in observing hijab)’.
‘No woman has been disrespected or humiliated, nor do we have anyone in the custody in connection to this.’
Clarifying the situation in a recent post on X, the ministry denied the authenticity of images circulating, stating that they did not depict police rounding up women for not wearing hijab. Instead, the images were identified as authorities removing beggars from the streets.
A human rights activist in Afghanistan who asked not to be identified said the detentions were meant to ‘put pressure on families to force women and girls to wear hijab and instil fear in women and girls through their families’.
‘This is the first time the Taliban has arrested women and girls from the streets openly’ over hijab, she told AFP.
‘But the arrest of a group of women under the pretext of ‘bad hijab’ was neither surprising, nor unexpected, because we know that the Taliban try to suppress women in every possible way and use fear and terror to oppress them.’
UN special rapporteur Richard Bennett responded to initial reports of the detentions in a post on X on Friday, saying the recent ‘arrests of women in Kabul… regrettably signifies further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression and undermines other rights’