Taliban restrictions.. Men have a share as women do
With the start of the movement Taliban In imposing strict rules on women in Afghanistan, it has also begun targeting a group that has not seen strict restrictions before: Afghan men.
While women have faced an increasingly severe onslaught of restrictions on their personal freedoms and dress codes since the Taliban took power three years ago, men in urban areas have mostly been able to go about their lives freely.
But the past four weeks have also brought them major changes. New laws were passed in late August requiring men to grow beards, banning them from imitating non-Muslims in appearance or behavior, which was widely interpreted as a ban on wearing jeans, and banning haircuts that conflict with Islamic law, which essentially means short or Western haircuts.
Men are now forbidden from looking at women other than their wives or relatives. As a result, more people are growing beards, carrying prayer rugs, and leaving their jeans at home.
According to a report by the newspaper,Washington Post“These first serious restrictions on men came as a surprise to many in Afghanistan, according to a range of Afghans, including Taliban opponents, reluctant supporters, and even members of the Taliban regime, who spoke in telephone interviews over the past two weeks.
In a society where a man’s voice is often seen as much stronger than a woman’s, some men are now questioning whether they should have spoken out earlier to defend the freedoms of their wives and daughters.
“If men had spoken up, we might be in a different situation now,” said a Kabul resident who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity or using only his first name for fear of unwanted scrutiny by the regime. “Now everyone grows a beard because we don’t want to be questioned or humiliated.”
Still, the Taliban’s new rules on men pale in comparison to the government’s restrictions on girls and women, who are still banned from school after the sixth grade, barred from entering universities, and recently banned from raising their voices in public, among many other rules.
But newly empowered religious morality officers, known for their white robes, have been knocking on the doors of men in some parts of Kabul for the past four weeks who have not been to mosque recently, according to residents.
Government employees said they feared being fired for failing to grow their beards, and some barbers now refuse to cut their beards.
Increasingly, male taxi drivers are being stopped for violating gender segregation rules, for taking female passengers in their cars, or for playing music.
The new laws give morality police the power to detain suspects for up to three days. In severe cases, such as repeated failure to pray at a mosque, suspects can be handed over to courts for trial and sentencing based on their interpretation of Islamic law.
Violators of the new rules are expected to be punished with fines or imprisonment, but people found guilty of some offences, such as adultery, could be sentenced to flogging or stoning to death.
Amir, a resident of eastern Afghanistan, said he supported the Taliban until the latest restrictions, but now feels forced into submission by the movement’s morality police.
“We are all committed Muslims and we know what is obligatory and what is not. But it is unacceptable to use force against us,” he added. “Even people who supported the Taliban are now trying to leave the country.”
According to the Washington Post, most of the men interviewed live in Kabul, the country’s most pluralistic city, or in other urban areas.
Residents of Afghanistan’s more conservative and traditional areas said they had not noticed much change. A resident of rural Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, said no one in his village was worried and that such rules had long been the norm there. “The morality police haven’t shown up here yet. They focus on the cities,” he said.
The new restrictions appear to reflect a broader shift in the balance of power within the Taliban, with more conservative elements gaining influence or seeking to assert themselves more aggressively in urban areas, according to Western officials and Afghan critics of the Taliban.
New restrictions on women include banning them from raising their voices, reciting the Quran in public, and looking at men other than their husbands or relatives. Women must also cover the lower half of their faces in addition to wearing a head covering they were already expected to wear.
Afghan women wearing burqas walk along a street in Kandahar on September 3, 2024. AFP
A crackdown by the morality police in urban areas, where some religious rules are rarely enforced, has exacerbated anxiety among women.
For men, it has come as a shock. A 36-year-old driver in Kabul said the new restrictions felt “enormous” and made his job increasingly difficult.
He said his income has dropped by 70 percent since late August, partly because the Taliban began enforcing a rule banning women from traveling alone in taxis.
Even in some government offices, a new sense of fear has set in. One former Taliban supporter recalls how a friend who still works for the regime recently had his salary withheld because his beard was not long enough.
“We heard that some government employees, whose beards were shorter than the required length, were prevented from entering their offices,” said a government employee who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Afghanistan: Some government employees whose beards were too short were banned from entering their offices. AFP
For the past three years, Afghan women have felt alone in their suffering, some growing increasingly angry at the silence of their husbands or the growing support for the Taliban, which has tried to win public support by building roads and repairing tunnels.
Several women said they hoped Afghan men would join their protests soon.
“Men were silent from day one, which gave the Taliban the courage to continue imposing such rules,” adds a 24-year-old woman from Kabul. “Now the Taliban have finally lost the support of men.”
