KABUL – The Taliban government on Saturday ordered Afghan women to cover themselves from head to toe, extending a series of harsh restrictions on women that dictate nearly every aspect of public life.
The government’s Ministry of Promoting Virtue and Prevention of Vice proposed the burqa as the favorite item of clothing to cover a woman’s face, hair and body. But it did not oblige the garment to be worn as long as women otherwise cover themselves with a hijab.
The full-body burqa, long a symbol of patriarchal control over women’s public dress in Afghanistan, was described by the ministry as “the good and complete hijab” – a garment of various versions that covers a woman’s hair and many or all her face and body.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August, Afghan women have been subjected to a cascade of announcements restricting their employment, education, travel, conduct and other aspects of public life. Many had assumed that the return of a burqa-style body covering was the inevitable next step.
The burqa, which leaves only a woman’s hands and feet visible and has a stitched facial net for good vision, was required by the Taliban when they ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
The ministry’s definition of “hijab” on Saturday described a piece of clothing that “shouldn’t be too short or too tight,” according to the ministry’s announcement. The intent was to obscure the contours of a woman’s body, the ministry said.
In public announcements about women in recent months, the government has often made vaguely worded statements that are open to interpretation. Wary of Western condemnation, as the Taliban government seeks diplomatic recognition and humanitarian aid, many announcements appear to be based on inference and intimidation.
But the ministry, which is responsible for enforcing the government’s interpretation of Islamic law, was quite specific on Saturday about punishing the male householder of women who fail to comply with the latest decree.
During a three-hour press conference dominated by statements promoting the religious virtues of the burqa, ministry officials and Islamic religious figures dictated a series of escalating penalties — including jail time for male householders who repeatedly ignored warnings from government officials regarding women’s clothing.
Reporting from Afghanistan
If a woman did not wear the prescribed hijab in public, ministry officials would visit her home and advise the male householder to oblige her to adhere to it, the ministry announced.
Failure to comply would result in a subpoena to the ministry, officials said. If the man still did not follow the guidelines, he would be jailed for three days.
If the jail term does not compel compliance, the man would face a religious court for further punishment, ministry officials said.
Male government employees whose wife or daughter does not cover up in public would be suspended or fired, the announcement said. And the relatively few women who are still allowed to work, such as nurses, doctors and teachers, can be fired if they don’t follow the rules.
“We want our sisters to live in dignity and safety,” said Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, acting minister of vice and virtue.
Shir Mohammad, a vice and virtue official, said in a statement that “all worthy Afghan women” should cover themselves from head to toe. “Women who are neither too old nor too young should cover their faces, except for the eyes,” he added.
Since the Taliban takeover in August, more women in Kabul appear to be wearing a burqa. But the majority of women on the streets of the capital have continued to wear less encompassing versions of hijabs, with many covering only their hair and leaving most or all of their faces still visible.
Even under the previous Western-backed government, many women – especially in rural areas and small towns – continued to wear burqas. The garment’s history goes back generations in Afghanistan and is a product of the conservative Afghan culture that long predated the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s.
At Saturday’s press conference, religious speakers delivered dissertations on the Islamic history of the hijab and its benefits under Islamic law and practice.
The ministry ordered officials across Afghanistan to put up posters in bazaars and other public locations with instructions and pictures of approved clothing for women. In recent months, small posters have appeared in Kabul depicting head-to-toe hijabs, including burqas, as normal public clothing for women.
On Saturday, ministry officials said the “rule, importance and benefits of the hijab” should be discussed in mosques and circulated through the news media.
In September, the Taliban transformed the previous government’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs into the office of the Ministry of Vice and Virtue. Under the Taliban rule of the 1990s, women who did not wear a burqa in public were often beaten by the religious police of vice and virtue, who also warned male relatives.
Also on Saturday, a spokesman for an Afghan opposition group that has mounted an uprising against the Taliban government reiterated earlier claims that it had “liberated” three districts in northern Panjshir province. When asked whether the National Resistance Front, as the movement calls itself, has seized government district centers, the spokesman replied by text message: “They were besieged in the district offices,” referring to Taliban officials.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter that “no military incident has occurred” in Panjshir or other nearby areas. The National Resistance Front claims that “was not true, no one should worry,” wrote Mr Mujahid.
He added that thousands of fighters from the Islamic emirate were in Panjshir, preventing any military advance at the front.
The National Resistance Front, or NRF, was formed by several leaders or supporters of Afghanistan’s western-backed government before it collapsed last summer. It is part of a resistance made up of a few armed fighters scattered across the mountains of northern Afghanistan, according to interviews with more than a dozen resistance fighters and leaders.
The NRF is estimated to have several hundred fighters, many of them junior officers in the former government’s security forces. It is led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of the late Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. Mr Massoud left Afghanistan after the Taliban took power and has been directing the NRF from abroad.
Yaqoob Akbary and Thomas Gibbons-Neff reporting contributed.