Kabul:

The Taliban government’s new law to “promote virtue and prevent vice” has codified their austere rules for Afghan society, dictating strict controls according to their vision of Islam.

In recent days there has been evidence of Taliban morality police enforcing the legislation, as well as Afghans self-policing to avoid conflicts with officials.

However, other elements are yet to be enforced and Taliban authorities have already been clamping down on behaviour they deem un-Islamic since surging back to power three years ago.

Here is what we know about the new law and its effect on society:

The new order

The text contains 35 articles. The most criticised dictates that a woman’s voice should not be raised outside the home and that they should not sing or read poetry aloud.

Unrelated men and women are forbidden from looking at each other, and women are commanded to cover themselves entirely in front of non-Muslim women.

Men are ordered to grow beards longer than a fist, wear loose-fitting clothes and not reveal their bodies between the navel and the knee. Sodomy is banned “even with one’s own wife”.

The media has been banned from mocking or humiliating Islam, transport companies told to alter schedules to fit prayer times and Muslims told they should not befriend or help non-Muslims.

Some traditional games have also been banned, as well as taking or viewing photos of living things on computers or smartphones.

Disobedience of parents has also been outlawed.

Changes in society

Over the past two weeks since the law was announced on August 21, AFP has collected testimonies of increasing scrutiny by Taliban officials.

Enforcement is tasked to morality police from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

In the capital Kabul, patrol teams have given warnings to women travelling without a male “mahram” chaperone, and with part of their hair or hands showing.

A 23-year-old Kabul man said he was stopped three times. 

“They asked me why I didn’t have a beard. I was scared and promised them I would grow one,” he told AFP.

In northern Mazar-e-Sharif, a taxi driver said he was “warned many times not to transport women without a mahram” or women not fully covered, and in central Parwan, women were chastised for not covering their faces.

In a Kabul bank, all the staff have swapped their western wear for traditional dress in a bid to comply with the new law.

However, this week, women’s voices could still be heard on TV and radio stations.

Previous strictures

Since ousting US-led troops in 2021, the Taliban government has intermittently announced social curbs with an emphasis on separating men and women.

Many of those previous orders overlap with the new law and were already in effect.

Girls have long been banned from secondary school and women from universities. Women travelling were previously ordered to be chaperoned by a family member and to cover themselves from head to toe in public.

Prayer at set times has been deemed obligatory while music in public and gambling have been outlawed.

Segregation of men and women is already required in most public places. Adultery, homosexuality and drug addiction have also been previously banned.

However, the new document is the most comprehensive manifesto of the Taliban’s vision for society since their return and outlines graduated punishments morality police can dole out.

They range from verbal warnings to threats, fines and detentions of varying lengths.

Grey areas

The law announced by the largely opaque Taliban government leaves many questions unanswered.

It says women should only leave home for an “urgent need”, but does not outline what situations they deem urgent.

With friendship and assistance to non-Muslims banned, it is unclear whether Afghans are banned from working with international organisations — a major lifeline for the economically bedraggled country.

It may also imply the Taliban government themselves are forbidden from dealing with western nations, further cementing their pariah status. And it’s unclear how media on phones and TV will be policed.

But perhaps the largest question is how uniformly and rigorously the new law will be enforced.

A United Nations report in July said there were “ambiguities and inconsistencies” around morality measures and their enforcement before this new law.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

An Afghan woman clad in a burqa walks past a graffiti painted wall, in Herat, west of Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, May 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Reza Shirmohammadi)
| Photo Credit: REZA SHIRMOHAMMADI

The Taliban government’s Morality Ministry said it would not cooperate with the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, calling it “an opposing side”.

The announcement comes after the UN mission (UNAMA) warned that a new morality law — requiring women to cover up completely and not raise their voices — would damage prospects for engagement with the international community.

The Taliban Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) said that “due to its continued propaganda, the PVPV will not provide any support or cooperation with UNAMA, which will be considered as an opposing side”.

“We want international organisations, countries, and those individuals who criticised the mentioned law to respect the religious values of Muslims and refrain from such criticisms and statements that insult Islamic values and sanctities,” the ministry said in a statement posted to social media Thursday.

Last week, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, was banned from entering the country after joining other UN experts in a statement urging the international community to “not normalise the de facto authorities or their appalling human rights violations”.

Chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told local media Tolo News that Mr. Bennett “was appointed to Afghanistan to spread propaganda and he is not someone whose words we can trust.”

The Taliban authorities, which are yet to be formally recognised by any nation, are still pushing to fill Afghanistan’s seat at the UN, which is held by a former official of the ousted foreign-backed government.

Punishments

The Taliban government’s 35-article morality law was published in the official gazette on July 31.

It imposes wide-ranging rules on men’s clothing and attending prayers as well as bans on keeping photos of living beings, homosexuality, animal fighting, playing music in public and non-Muslim holidays.

The law sets out graduated punishments, from verbal warnings to threats, fines and detentions of varying lengths.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, has called the law a “distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions”.

The United Nations and the European Union have warned that the law could damage prospects for engagement with the international community.

UNAMA is mandated by the UN Security Council to engage with the Taliban authorities, including the PVPV, with which it has directly raised concerns over moral oversight policy and practices of enforcement.

In a report last month, UNAMA said the ministry had a growing role in enforcing religious law in Afghanistan and accused it of creating a “climate of fear”.

The virtue and vice ministry implements an austere vision of Islam, which has increasingly dominated Afghanistan since the 2021 Taliban takeover.

Morality police squads are empowered to scold, arrest and punish citizens violating edicts. The laws have marginalised women, effectively banned music and outlawed other activities deemed un-Islamic.

The Taliban government has consistently dismissed international criticism of its policies, including restrictions on women that the UN has labelled “gender apartheid”.

The law is “firmly rooted in Islamic teachings” that should be respected and understood, chief government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement on Monday.

“To reject these laws without such understanding is, in our view, an expression of arrogance,” he said, adding that for a Muslim to criticise the law “may even lead to the decline of their faith”.

Doha, Qatar:

Taliban authorities were told women must be included in public life, UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo said on Monday as she defended a decision to sideline civil society groups at official talks in Doha.

Rights organisations have strongly criticised the controversial UN move to exclude the groups, including women’s rights activists, from the two-day meeting on Afghanistan as the price for the Taliban government’s participation.

“Authorities will not sit across the table with Afghan civil society in this format, but they have heard very clearly the need to include women and civil society in all aspects of public life”, DiCarlo told a Doha news conference.

The UN-hosted meeting began on Sunday and is the third such gathering to be held in Qatar in a little over a year, but the first to include the Taliban authorities who seized power in Afghanistan for a second time in 2021.

The talks were due to discuss increasing engagement with Afghanistan and a more coordinated response to the country, including economic issues and counter-narcotics efforts.

The international community has wrestled with its approach to the Taliban since they returned to power, with no country officially recognising its government.

 ‘Gender apartheid’ 

The group has imposed a strict interpretation of Islam, with women subjected to laws characterised by the UN as “gender apartheid”.

The Taliban refused an invitation to Doha talks in February, insisting on being the only Afghan representatives, to the exclusion of civil society groups. But their condition was accepted in the build-up to this latest round.

The United States said it agreed to participate in Monday’s talks after receiving assurances that the talks would meaningfully discuss human rights.

US point man on Afghanistan Thomas West and Rina Amiri, the US special envoy on the rights of Afghan women and girls, in Doha “made clear that the Afghan economy cannot grow while half the population’s rights are not respected”, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.

DiCarlo, who chaired the UN talks in the Qatari capital, said she “hopes” that “there’ll be new consideration” of Taliban government policy on women in public life including girls’ education.

The UN and international delegations will have the chance to meet with civil society representatives, including women’s rights groups, following the close of the main meetings.

But Amnesty International chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement ahead of the talks that “caving into the Taliban’s conditions to secure their participation in the talks would risk legitimising their gender-based institutionalised system of oppression”.

The Taliban authorities have repeatedly said the rights of all citizens are guaranteed under Islamic law.

The head of the Taliban delegation, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, told the more than 20 assembled special envoys and UN officials at the opening session that diplomats should “find ways of interaction and understanding rather than confrontation”, despite “natural” differences in policy.

 ‘Engaging constructively’ 

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is keen on engaging constructively with Western nations as well,” Mujahid said.

“Like any sovereign state, we uphold certain religious and cultural values and public aspirations that must be acknowledged,” he added.

Mujahid also pressed to end sanctions, saying Afghans are “being ganged up on”.

The Taliban government spokesman questioned whether ongoing sanctions were “fair practice” after “wars and insecurity for almost half a century as a result of foreign invasions and interference”.

Russia, which has maintained an embassy in Kabul, hinted it could drop its own sanctions, saying the group were the de facto authorities.

“We’ve been saying consistently that you have to recognise this fact and deal with them as such because, whether you like it or not, this movement is running the country now. You cannot simply ignore that,” said Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya.

DiCarlo said the issue of sanctions was “raised” but not discussed in depth.

“It’s a member-state issue whether they’re going to continue certain sanctions or not. The sanctions are on people, not on the country at large,” she said

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

And 600,000 have arrived since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021 and imposed their austere version of Islamic law. Image for representation purpose only. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Pakistan’s plan to evict hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants is “unacceptable”, Taliban authorities said Wednesday, denying allegations by Islamabad its citizens were responsible for a string of suicide attacks there.

Around 1.3 million Afghans are registered refugees in Pakistan and 880,000 more have legal status to remain, according to the latest United Nations figures.

But caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said Tuesday a further 1.7 million Afghans were in Pakistan illegally, giving a November 1 deadline to return home or face deportation.

The order comes as Pakistan grapples with a rise in attacks the government blames on militants operating from Afghanistan, a charge Kabul routinely denies.

“The behaviour of Pakistan against Afghan refugees is unacceptable,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on social media site X.

“Afghan refugees are not involved in Pakistan’s security problems. As long as they leave Pakistan voluntarily, that country should tolerate them.”

Bugti claimed Afghan nationals were responsible for 14 of 24 suicide attacks in Pakistan since January.

“We deny all these claims because Afghans have migrated to other countries for their safety, their security,” said Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.

“It’s natural when someone migrates to another country for his safety, he would never want insecurity there,” he told AFP.

Legions of Afghans have migrated to neighbouring Pakistan over decades of conflict during the Soviet invasion, the following civil war and the U.S.-led occupation.

And 600,000 have arrived since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021 and imposed their austere version of Islamic law.

Taliban authorities have been trying to tempt back those who left, despite the nation suffering from a massive scaleback of aid following the collapse of the U.S.-backed government.

Rights monitors have also reported reprisal killings and disappearances.

“Internally work is underway to ensure the capacity for Afghans coming back to the country, so that they live in their country in a peaceful atmosphere,” Haqqani told AFP.