Speech, clothing, hygiene, looks… The lives of Afghan women are now legally under the control of the Taliban

In Afghanistan, the situation of women continues to deteriorate. The latest example is that the Taliban regime has just promulgated a 114-page law that imposes very severe new restrictions on women with a range of sanctions.

The entire life of Afghan women, social and private, is now under control. The new text promulgated by the Taliban was ratified last week and has 35 articles, with this symbol first: the ban on women singing, reciting a poem, and even reading aloud in public. Women already had to wear the burqa in the street, school was forbidden to them after the age of 12, now it is their speech that is muzzled.

The new law also stipulates how women must cover their entire bodies in public, to avoid “tempting” men. No clothes “neither thin, nor tight, nor short. No longer allowed to wear makeup or perfume, or to look at men with whom they have no blood or marriage ties.

These prohibitions were already partly applied, but it is the formal enactment, the institutionalization of these prohibitions in the law that is new, with, as a key, a whole range of sanctions, which goes from verbal warnings to police custody of one hour to three days, including threats or fines. The application of these sanctions depends on a single body, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, nicknamed the morality police, the real armed wing of the regime’s hardliners who have therefore gained the upper hand over the rare moderates within the Taliban.

This law marks a return to the era of the first Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001, which ended with armed intervention by the United States. When they returned three years ago, in August 2021, the Taliban had made a commitment to respect women’s rights. But they ultimately went back 25 years. The UN did attempt a meeting with Islamist leaders in Kabul last June to give dialogue a chance. The initiative seems to have fizzled out. The Taliban, banned from Western nations, are increasingly isolating themselves diplomatically. Last week, the UN-appointed Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, was permanently expelled from the country.