Since the Taliban took over, seeing women drivers on the road has become increasingly rare. Herat city, located in the west of Afghanistan, is one of the few places where women drivers could still be spotted on the streets. Known as one of Afghanistan’s more socially open-minded cities, Herat had its own women-only driving schools and had at least 5,000 women drivers by January 2020, a number that was increasing by hundreds per year.
However, women drivers in Afghanistan are about to go extinct thanks to the Taliban, which banned the issuing of new licenses to women in May 2022. Now, several of Herat’s women drivers tell Zan Times that the Taliban are using sexual harassment to prevent them from driving in public.
Foroohar*, a 23-year-old university student remembers the last day she drove her car. It was a Friday in August 2023 and she was on her way to visit a friend in another part of the city. She covers herself with a black veil in an attempt to avoid raising the interest of any Taliban in the city. It isn’t enough – as she reaches a checkpoint, six Taliban members who appear to be inspecting vehicles, instruct Foroohar to stop her car.
She hands over her car’s documents to a Taliban militant. Instead of inspecting them, he smiles lecherously, brings his face close to hers, and says, “Wow, what a captivating fragrance.” Feeling humiliated and frightened, she pulls back and attempts to continue her journey. Then another Taliban member approaches and makes a sexual proposition while inspecting her car. “He told me to come to his house and be intimate with him,” Foroohar recounts to Zan Times. Foroohar was terrified: “I told him that I am a Muslim woman, while I was feeling terrible. After that, I just cried and continued my way.”
That was not the only time Foroohar has faced such unpleasant behaviour at the hands of the Taliban. Though she tries to find routes around the city that avoid checkpoints and harassment from the Taliban, she can’t always avoid them. “Once, when I reached the checkpoint, a Taliban inspection officer asked me if I was married. I said no. He said, ‘Then can I come to your house?’” she says. His harassment continued: “He took my mobile and called his number to take mine, and afterward, he called me every day until I finally blocked him. He continued to call from different numbers until I eventually changed my number.”
Finally, Foroohar was so upset by the Taliban’s behaviour and their treatment of women drivers that she felt forced to give up driving and sell her car.
Like Foroohar, Nahid*, a 24-year-old who has been driving in Herat since 2019, has faced repeated harassment and intimidation from the Taliban at checkpoints. “I hate checkpoints, and seeing the Taliban and hearing their insinuating words upsets me,” she tells Zan Time. “For the first two months after the Taliban came into power, I didn’t dare to go out with my car. After that, every time I went out with my car, the Taliban treated me inappropriately and took away my mental security.”
Insensitive and often intentionally humiliating remarks and comments such as “Where is your husband?” and “You have no shame” are some of the insults that Nahid and other women drivers in Herat regularly hear from the Taliban at checkpoints. Some are far worse: “Sometimes they give obscene and sexual insults that are beyond description,” Nahid says.
Sumaia* decided she could no longer drive in the city after repeatedly being harassed and intimidated by the Taliban. “One night, I was taking my son to a hospital. On the way, the Taliban stopped my car, asked for the car documents, and, despite showing the necessary documents, they threw them into the car and asked me not to drive it anymore. From midnight until morning, I cried incessantly for myself and other helpless and miserable women of my country.”
Though the 42-year-old woman had been driving in the city for six years, she is now forced to use an urban tricycle to go to her job as a nurse in a government hospital: “I have been greatly insulted, and I am forced to go to work with this tricycle, where I shiver in the cold weather.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Omid Arman is the pseudonym of a journalist in Afghanistan.
