Afghanistan Peace CampaignAfghanistan Analysts Network
Changing Afghans’ dress and behaviour to comply with the Emirate’s vision of sharia has been an abiding mission of the Taliban since they first emerged as a movement, but it is now being enforced with far greater reach and capacity. Unlike their first period in power, the second Emirate is able to pursue this mission without the distraction of war. In full control of Afghanistan’s territory and backed by a functioning state apparatus inherited from the Islamic Republic, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is a powerful and well-resourced tool of the state for reshaping everyday life.
Drawing on interviews with women and men in Kabul and other provinces, as well as vice and virtue enforcers themselves, the report offers a window into how the Taliban’s morality law operates in practice. It examines how its enforcers seek to control behaviour and clothing on the streets and in workplaces, creating an atmosphere of fear that drives not only compliance but also defiance.
For many Afghan women, negotiating public space has become an arduous experience. Interviewees describe being admonished and threatened for what they wear, their movements, and for being outside without a close male relative, a mahram. Although we encountered men who fully support their female relatives wearing ‘normal’ clothes and going out unaccompanied, many families have resorted to policing wives, daughters and sisters to avoid them being harassed, publicly humiliated or detained. The overall effect has been a narrowing of women’s lives and heightened anxiety.
Enforcement, however, is uneven and the report documents regional variation as well as acts of defiance. Some interviewees challenge the Emirate’s interpretation of Islam itself, rejecting its fixation on outward appearance — such as the length of men’s beards or the visibility of women’s hair as missing the point of what is right and wrong and of what they, as Muslims, should be enjoined or forbidden to do. These tensions point to the limits of enforcing obedience through fear, even as fear remains a central tool of control.
The report also interviews enforcers to find out more about who they are, how they are recruited and trained and how they experience policing a population that often fears or resents them. All were from outside Kabul, but working in the capital and they found it an alien and alienating city. None felt comfortable interacting with unrelated women. Yet all the women we interviewed in Kabul had experienced intrusive interactions with enforcers in public places or women-only workplaces. The law gives male enforcers the power and opportunity to breach spaces generally considered — by culture and practice — to be exclusively female, as well as public spaces – streets, markets and shops – in which women could expect to be respected. It has left women vulnerable to abuse by men who act with all the authority of the state.
Earlier this year, we published A Year of Propagating Virtue and Preventing Vice, which examined the law’s impact in its first year. This report goes further and deeper, offering a granular picture of how the vice and virtue law is being enforced — and experienced — in Afghanistan.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Rachel Reid
You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.