The Taliban have replaced the country’s ministry for women with an office for what is known as the group’s moral police, residents of Kabul have said, as videos showed female former employees of the department apparently locked out of the building.
Workers in Kabul were photographed on Friday replacing the sign on the women’s ministry building with a new one, which read, in a mixture of Dari and Arabic, “Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”.
The Taliban has earlier carried out anti-human rights activities in Afghanistan during its rule between 1996 to 2001. At the time girls were not allowed to attend school and women were not allowed to work. The same is expected to repeat in their current rule after US troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had existed during the earlier rule of Taliban which acted as the militant group’s moral police. They imposed strict rules against breaking the dress code which often meant public executions and floggings. The moral police acted on the group’s interpretation of the sharia law.
The Taliban have already declared that women will not be allowed to work while they will have access to education. And now, female employees say that they were not allowed to report to work and were told to go back home every time they tried.
“I am the only breadwinner in my family,” said a woman who worked in the department. “When there is no ministry, what should an Afghan woman do?” she asked.
During a cabinet announcement on September 7, the Taliban did not mention the appointment of a women’s minister, while an acting minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice was named.
