Over the past 18 months, de facto Taliban authorities detained more than 29,000 individuals on various charges such as theft, kidnapping, murder and moral crimes according to country’s top prison official.

“We have released some 15,000 inmates,” Mohammad Yusuf Mistari, the Taliban’s director of prisons, told VOA in WhatsApp messages. “Currently, there are approximately 14,000 inmates in the Islamic Emirate’s jails.”

Among the prisoners, up to 1,100 are women.

Taliban officials claim they have no political prisoners and that all the prisoners are held on criminal charges — a claim not confirmed by independent organizations.

But groups like Human Rights watch say the Taliban have opted for killing criminals associated with armed opposition groups — Islamic State and other Afghan militias that have increasingly posed serious security threats to the fledging Islamist regime —instead of keeping them in jails.

Under the Islamic Emirate’s strict interpretation of Sharia, acts such as drinking alcohol or extramarital relationships are considered criminal and carry severe penalties, while homosexuality and sodomy are punishable by death.

Since November, the Taliban have restarted public displays of punishment. Thieves have had their hands chopped off, adulterers have been flogged, and those found guilty of murder have been shot and killed in front of hundreds of male spectators.

More than 100 men and women have been publicly whipped, and at least two men have been executed so far, according to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which monitors human rights in the country.

“Such barbaric punishments — often carried out against persons for activities that should not even be considered crimes, such as listening to music — constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and are prohibited under international law,” Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA.

Redoing torture

Various forms of torture have been widely practiced at formal and informal detention centers and jails in Afghanistan, according to UNAMA and various rights groups.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters reportedly died in extremely brutal detention conditions in late 2001 and early 2002 during U.S.-led military campaigns that toppled the Taliban with the help of local Afghan militias, according to reports by the New York Times and Physicians for Human Rights.

Torture of detainees was also prevalent under the former Afghan government, which incarcerated more than 30,000 individuals, a large number of whom were alleged Taliban insurgents, according to U.N. reports dating back to at least 2011.

Last year, the Taliban produced a film documenting the bitter experiences of some prisoners held at the Parwan Detention Facility beside Bagram Air Base, which the U.S. military operated until 2012 when it was transferred to the Afghan government.

“The Taliban seem to be repeating all the mistakes and abuses of the past, including those they complained that the Republic [former Afghan government] had been responsible for, like torture,” Gossman said.

Mistari, the Taliban’s top official for prisons, refuted the torture allegations.

“Our leaders have given us a 39-articles guidance in which it’s said that we should treat inmates nicely,” he said, adding that the guidance also states if a guard or a jail official is seen taunting prisoners, he should be transferred elsewhere.

“We have nothing to do with their crimes. We are only there to protect the prisoners, feed them and keep them,” Mistari added.

Food, cold

Maintaining the prisons and feeding the large inmate population has long been a challenge in Afghanistan.

The previous Afghan government received financial and technical support from international donors to manage its prisons and detention facilities.

Facing strict international sanctions, the Taliban appears to be unable to run the jails, feed and care for the large inmate population.

Even outside the Taliban jails, an overwhelming majority of Afghans face hunger.

Throughout 2022, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) provided three meals daily for some 12,000 inmates in Afghanistan.

“The ICRC continues to work with Afghan authorities to ensure humane and dignified conditions of detention across Afghanistan,” Lucien Christen, an ICRC spokesperson, told VOA.

Moreover, the humanitarian organization has donated blankets, shawls, jackets and socks to keep 20,000 prisoners warm during the frigid winter temperatures.

Cold weather has killed more than 120 Afghans over the past two weeks, Taliban authorities have confirmed.

Both UNAMA and ICRC have access to prisons in Afghanistan for monitoring purposes.

“De facto authorities do appear to be seeking to fulfil their obligations in relation to the treatment of detainees,” UNAMA reported in July 2022. “Progress is hindered by financial constraints, resulting at times in inadequate food, medical care and hygiene supplies for detainees, and the cessation of vocational education and training programs for prisoners that were previously funded by the international community.”

Some senior Taliban leaders, including current ministers and governors, have a history of incarceration inside and outside Afghanistan, including at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, a U.S. military prison set up in 2002 where only one Afghan inmate remains.

From Lafayette Park in front of the White House to the streets of London, Toronto and many other cities around the world, activists have been staging small protests to condemn the Taliban’s repressive policies against women in Afghanistan and call for a stronger international response.

While they attract a relatively small number of participants, the protests have increased in frequency over the last year, largely in response to growing Taliban restrictions on women inside Afghanistan.

On January 14, fewer than 100 protesters showed up at Farragut Square Park in Washington to chant slogans against the Taliban’s recent edict banning universities and work for Afghan girls and women. On the same day, about three dozen protesters gathered in heavy rain in Los Angeles, making similar demands.

“In Los Angeles, we called for an end to the gender apartheid instilled by the Taliban,” Arash Azizada, an Afghan American community organizer, told VOA.

The protests take place as women and civil society activists inside Afghanistan have gone silent under Taliban rule.

‘We want to be their voices’

Human rights groups accuse Taliban authorities of forcefully banning protests, detaining and torturing activists, and censoring the media. The Taliban strongly reject the allegations and instead claim they have freed the country from a U.S. invasion.

The protesters outside Afghanistan say they show solidarity with Afghan women whose rights are being crushed under the Taliban’s undemocratic rule.

“We want to be their voices. We want to be their bridge to the world,” said Asila Wardak, a former Afghan diplomat and now a fellow at Harvard University who participated in several protests in the U.S.

The Afghan protesters are part of a widespread global chorus that demands the Taliban immediately reverse restrictions imposed on women’s work and education in Afghanistan.

Taliban Rebukes UN Over Call to Lift Bans on Afghan Women

But the Taliban have remained defiant, giving no clarity about when or whether the will be lifted.

“Anti-government protests outside the country that the government controls (e.g., anti-Iranian government protests that take place in Washington) do not seem to have much impact in the country that the protests concern,” Thomas Carothers of the Global Protest Tracker at the Carnegie Endowment told VOA by email.

“Repressive governments are usually able to control news of such events,” he said.

While U.S. and European officials have often voiced support for Afghan women and have imposed travel and economic sanctions on Taliban leaders and institutions, protesters say the international community should undertake meaningful action to dissuade and disable the Taliban from depriving millions of women of their basic rights.

“Just issuing statements of solidarity with Afghan women is not enough,” said Wardak. “The international community should facilitate opportunities for Afghan women to directly engage the Taliban and demand accountability.”

Azizzada, an activist in Los Angeles, said a meaningful response to the Taliban’s perceived misogyny would be for the U.S. and its Western allies to offer more asylum and educational opportunities for Afghans.

“If Afghan girls cannot learn in Afghanistan, they should be allowed to do so in the United States or elsewhere,” Azizzada said.

Local voices

Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, more than 150,000 Afghans, among them many women leaders and activists, have been evacuated or given asylum in the U.S., Canada and European countries.

Many evacuees have engaged in high-profile advocacy for change in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Some activists have received prestigious awards and fellowships at elite universities, giving them a bully pulpit from which to write for and appear in prominent media outlets.

Now there are concerns that the activists in the Western countries are given too much attention at the cost of women inside Afghanistan.

“Efforts outside of Afghanistan should complement the activism of those inside the country and not hijack the narrative and present unrealistic solutions,” said Obaidullah Baheer, a Kabul analyst.

Even while women are not allowed to advocate for their rights inside Afghanistan, Baheer said, “it should not mean that their voices be ignored.”

That Afghan women have continued to suffer under the Taliban, despite protests and advocacy outside Afghanistan, is not disputed by some prominent activists.

“I believe that protests have impacts on the situation,” Zarifa Ghafari, a former Afghan official who now advocates for Afghan women’s rights from Germany, told VOA. “But I do not have confidence in the scattered gatherings by Afghans, and you have not seen any positive result over the past one and one-half years.”

Taliban officials have largely ignored the Afghan protests abroad or labeled the protesters as Western puppets.

Inside Afghanistan, however, nearly all Afghans have rated their lives as “suffering,” and a majority have said that women are disrespected under the Taliban, according to a recent Pew survey.