The Taliban have recently passed a new law which will enforce several rules governing morality in Afghanistan. The new Orwellian laws, which were issued on Wednesday, range from requiring Afghan women to cover their faces and banning them from reading and singing in public to requiring men to grow beards and banning car drivers from playing music, the Justice Ministry said.

‍

The laws come as part of the government’s ‘vice prevention’ strategy. The ministry for the ‘propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice’ was put in place by the Taliban after they usurped power. This new set of destructive rules were approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and are the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and mark a bitter blow to Afghan women’s fight for autocracy. 

‍

part of a strict new set of ‘vice and virtue legislation’, which was approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.

‍

 The Taliban is a Islamist nationalist and pro-Pashtun movement founded in the early 1990s. However after seizing complete control of Afghanistan, they ruled most of the country from 1996 until 2001; before being driven out by American troops with the help of their UK allies - in what was America's longest war. The Taliban rapidly returned to power in 2021, after seizing the countries capital Kabul. Initially, made a series of empty pledges to increase women’s access to education and to tackle drug production among other things. Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid stated in August 2021:

'We are going to allow women to work and study...women are going to be very active, but within the framework of Islam.'

Contrarily, since their return, the Taliban have seemed to pick up right where they left off, enforcing their draconian regime and diminishing all hope for Afghan women, who have been further suppressed by Article 13. Article 13 specifically relates to women, requiring females to veil their body at all times while in public, adding that a face covering is essential to avoid temptation as well as tempting others (men). It also mandates that a woman’s clothing should not be thin, tight or short.

‍

Adding to the horrors, women are also now forbidden from singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public, since the female voice is considered too intimate. Afghan women are also banned from looking at men that they are not related to by blood or marriage and vice versa. Women are also told to cover themselves in front of non-Muslim males and females to avoid being corrupted. 

‍

The new rules as enforced by the Talbian indicate a scary and dangerous road ahead for Afghan women who will no doubt continue in their fight for what many people globally would consider ‘basic freedoms’. The right to self-government and the right to be governed by a just system/ruler continues to evade the women of Afghanistan. As stated by Fiona Frazer, the head of the human rights service at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, after the UN published a report claiming the ministry was contributing to a culture of fear and intimidation to:

‍

‘Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls’.-

‍