Taliban's Crackdown on Women's Dress in Herat

In stop-start efforts since November, Taliban officials have cracked down on women and girls in the western city of Herat who have been ignoring the hardline group's rules by showing their faces. Enforcement agents are preventing them from entering hospitals and seminaries and pulling them out of public transport.

Initially, women and girls were punished for not wearing a burka — the Afghan burka is typically blue, has a netted opening for the eyes and drapes down around the body, largely constraining the woman wearing it. Later, after what residents described as pushback, officials enforcing the rules relented and allowed women to wear the typical conservative dress in this part of Afghanistan, a voluminous cloak known as a chaddar, along with a face mask.

At the main hospital in the Western city of Herat, one health worker described female staff milling outside the entryway for hours, waiting for colleagues on the night shift to hand over their burkas so they could enter — like a token that allowed them "entry permission," the worker said. In another incident, Human Rights Watch reported on a female surgeon, who was detained for several hours for not donning the burka.

Forcing women to don burkas, to cover their faces or even to wear a hijab, or head covering, "is part of the Taliban's policy of controlling women's bodies to make women invisible," said Sahar Fetrat, a researcher in the women's rights division of Human Rights Watch. She said in a statement: "Afghan women and United Nations human rights experts have called this 'gender apartheid.'"

In interviews conducted since November, more than a dozen Herat residents described different incidents to NPR. They all requested anonymity, or that we only use an initial of their first names, fearing reprisal from Taliban officials. The crackdown was run by officials of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which is tasked with the implementation of the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law.

The crackdown was ostensibly for women and girls to follow an edict issued in May 2022 by the Taliban that effectively gave two options to women and girls who had reached puberty: they could wear a burka — or a black robe, headscarf, face veil and gloves, leaving only a slit for the eyes. Women's male guardians — their fathers, husbands, brothers or sons — were made responsible for enforcing those rules and were threatened with punishment if their female relatives did not obey. That was followed by more detailed rules issued in August 2024 that fleshed out the earlier edict, known as the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Women have been detained and even held for days in lockups for violating those rules — but they are implemented haphazardly.

"The enforcement of vice and virtue rules appears to move in waves — periods of intensified clamping down on rulebreakers in a given location followed by an easing of pressure," said Kate Clark, co-director and senior analyst of Afghanistan Analysts Network, which authored a report focusing on the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in December.

"These shifts can occur after a change of governor or a public backlash, or for some other unfathomable reason: people are not always sure what sparked Amr bil-Maruf to crack down — or relent," she said, referring to the ministry by its local name.

It wasn't clear why agents of the ministry for the prevention of vice and promotion of virtue decided, in early November, to fan out across Herat's government departments, schools and health facilities to check on the dress of women and girls.

The city, which lies near the border with Iran, is comparatively more liberal than others in Afghanistan. Before the Taliban seized power in August 2021, some women and girls participated in football teams, volleyball teams and chess clubs. They were a common sight in academic institutions.

NPR sought comment from officials of the Islamic Emirate, as the Taliban formally describe themselves but did not receive a response.

As part of the crackdown, in early November, agents tasked with imposing the writ of the vice and virtue ministry posted themselves at the gates of the Herat Regional Hospital, a government-run facility where the poorest Afghans seek treatment.

There, one male medic and another male health worker, who both requested anonymity, told NPR that agents of the vice and virtue ministry prevented female patients and medical staff from entry unless they donned the burka.

The medic said the rule was hardest on the impoverished women, women who had scraped together "100 to 150 Afghanis to come to the hospital," roughly between $2.30 and $3. "And when they came to the hospital, they weren't allowed to enter."

And he described chaotic scenes, including the outer perimeter of the hospital crowded with female health workers. They were waiting for their female colleagues on the night shift to exit, and to hand over their burkas — so they could don them and enter the hospital. "Everyone was exchanging the burka," he said. "It was a kind of entry permission."

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, which supports health care clinics around Afghanistan, reported a 28% drop in urgent admissions during the first few days after the vice ministry began its crackdown. The group said in a statement that the numbers ticked back up after a few days.

Vice agents were also posted around religious seminaries — the only avenue available for most women to seek education after the Taliban banned schooling for most women and girls after grade 6.

In one incident in late November, vice squad officials outside one seminary demanded teenage girls wear a burka. One 16-year-old student told NPR that the order led to a standoff outside the school, with girls refusing to leave. She requested anonymity because she'd been warned that she would be in trouble if she spoke to others about what happened at the seminary.

The teenage girls NPR spoke to said that several Taliban bureaucrats tried to defuse the situation, telling the vice squad agents, "Let the girls enter the school and we will explain the law to them." But, the 16-year-old says, the girls refused to enter and told the Taliban officials, "either repeal this law now or we will not enter this school."

The teenage girl says the Taliban officials became anxious, telling the girls that if they stayed on the road, "the shopkeepers will see you."

The teenager then told NPR that a few dozen girls "attacked the Taliban" — it appears they overwhelmed the five or six men posted at the seminary gates. The teenager says that after that, they were allowed into the seminary without burkas.

It was a win, the teenager said — to a degree: "We were told to wear a black niqab," referring to a face veil, "and gloves." That incident was corroborated by another teenager who requested her name not be used.

Within days of the crackdown, other Herat residents confirmed that the agents of the vice and virtue ministry also backed down on older women wearing the burka. Instead, they insisted women don a chaddar. And when one woman forgot to wear one while trying to get her sick mother to a hospital, she was stopped at a Taliban checkpoint and ordered to return home, according to a female medic who requested anonymity. The medic identified the woman as a friend of hers and said that "she wasn't allowed to move even though it was an emergency."

Policing of the rules spread to women in vehicles.

The male health worker who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity said agents of the vice and virtue ministry set up checkpoints to flag down vehicles to check what women inside were wearing. They ordered women to only sit in the back of shared minibuses, which operate as a privately run transport system.

The male health worker said that within days, women were banned from sitting in a shared minibus with men altogether. A female medic said that the ban immediately drove up the price for women to ride public transport, from about 50 cents a ride to $1.60 — because the shared minibuses had to factor in the losses they'd make by not allowing men to board. And, still, drivers sometimes refused, she said, because of the delays and scrutiny at Taliban checkpoints when they ferried women. "They check the women, they check their hijab," she said. They ask, she said, "Where is your male guardian? Where do you want to go?"

Two female health workers who requested anonymity, told NPR in separate interviews that they saw agents of the vice and virtue ministry detain women inside a large shipping-style container in a Herat square in the freezing cold for several hours in November. Their crime, according to the two women: they were only wearing headscarves and long coats — no chaddar.

The two female health workers told NPR that the restrictions on women entering a minibus with men, and the higher price for women to ride in an all-woman bus, meant they simply walked to their hospital jobs: about an hour's march each way. One worker told NPR: "I think they want women not to leave the house at all."