Taliban ask women not to leave their homes

The Taliban announced, on Saturday, that women must now completely cover their bodies and faces in public and avoid leaving their homes. Government issued a decree on Saturday, It was endorsed by the supreme leader of the Taliban and Afghanistan, Hebatullah Akhundzada, which makes wearing the full veil mandatory in public.

The Taliban have made it clear that their preference is for burqaThis veil is often blue in color and intertwined at the level of the eyes, but other types of veils that reveal only the eyes will be tolerated. They also felt that unless women had an urgent reason to go out, they “better to stay at home.”

Taliban extremism

On Sunday, this decree did not appear to be followed immediately in Kabul, where many women continued to walk the streets of the capital without hiding their faces. The Taliban justified the fact that women must hide their faces when in the company of a man who does not belong to their immediate family by needing to avoid any “provocation”, according to their very strict interpretation of Islamic law. .

These new restrictions, denounced by the United Nations and the United States in particular, underscore the extremism of the Taliban, which initially tried to show a more open face than during its previous transition to power between 1996 and 2001. They then deprived women of almost all of their rights, nor Especially asking them to wear a burqa. But the Islamists quickly backtracked on their commitments, largely excluding women from public employment, denying them access to high school or even restricting their right to movement.

Heads of families responsible for enforcing the rules

To implement its latest edict, the Taliban was careful not to punish the women themselves, so as not to shock the international community further, but rather to place the burden of this social control on their families.

Heads of families who do not require the wearing of the full veil are first punished with three days’ imprisonment, and then more severe penalties. Over the past two decades, it has been Afghan womenHe gained new freedoms, went back to school or applied for jobs in all sectors of activity, even if the state remained socially conservative.