This story is published in collaboration with Himal Southasian, a regional magazine of politics and culture.
BY 8 AM on a Wednesday morning in January, the 18-year-old Quran teacher in Herat, in western Afghanistan, was ready to head out to work. She had dressed the way she always had since the Taliban returned to power in 2021: in a long black dress and a manto – a traditional long coat – with her hair fully hidden with a black headband and a large scarf that covered her shoulders, a grey overcoat layered on top of it all and a black face mask. Over four years, the only changes in her attire had been in length and colour. Her clothes had grown longer, darker, heavier.
She stepped outside her home as she had hundreds of times before. She did not make it to her class.
She was standing by the roadside waiting for a taxi when a Taliban vehicle – a US-made Ford Ranger – pulled up beside her. Inside were three armed men in white clothing. They were the morality police, officers of the Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and Hearing of Complaints. “They asked me: who are you waiting for? Why are you alone? Where are you going? Where is your mahram?” she recalled in a phone interview to Zan Times. A mahram is a close male family member who, under Taliban laws, must act as guardians and accompany women as chaperones when they go out in public.
She tried to explain that she was a teacher, that she needed to be in class on time, that her father and brother were at work and that she travelled this route alone every day. She was not allowed to finish her explanation. “They looked at me from head to toe and said, ‘Your clothes are not according to sharia. A woman must not wear a manto.’”
The manto, worn by generations of women in Herat, has recently been declared unacceptable by the Taliban’s morality police. In mid January 2026, checkpoints appeared at some of the city’s busiest streets. Taxis and public vehicles were stopped; women without burqas or long prayer chadors were forced out and interrogated in public. The crackdown marked a new phase in how the Taliban is enforcing its control of Afghanistan’s population, particularly women: not only through laws and decrees, but also through public exhibitions of coercion and terror in everyday life – in taxis, at traffic junctions, outside homes. Everyone from children as young as 12 and women in their seventies have been questioned. Women wearing the manto have been prevented from entering hospitals. The inspections have extended into violence: drivers who protested have been beaten in public.
According to the journalist who spoke with Zan Times, the vice and virtue directorate in Herat operates as a power centre unto itself. “They act as if they have a direct plan from the leader,” he said.
The story of hijab crackdown and enforcement is not unique to Herat. Women in other provinces report similar pressure. In Taloqan, the capital of Takhar Province in the north, women resisted demands to cover their faces for years. According to news reports, in January, Taliban officials in the province asked for women police officers to help enforce the new rules. “Most women only wear a mask now,” said a 27-year-old woman who spoke to Zan Times at the time. “That’s why they asked for reinforcements.”
In Kandahar, in the south, a 24-year-old woman leaves home layered in black – wearing gloves, face covering and a headband, and yet is still threatened. “They want all women to wear blue burqas.” A teacher in Ghazni said she wears multiple layers to avoid losing her job. “I add an extra shawl so they don’t talk.”
Since the vice and virtue law has not been implemented fully in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, in August 2025 the Taliban regime passed a directive, also published by the ministry of justice, titled “Procedures of Enforcement Committees of the Law on Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”. It requires the creation of enforcement committees across every province and district. These committees extend the reach of the morality police into nearly every sphere of public life. Chambers of commerce, factories, universities, private schools, language centres and sports leagues are required to align their activities with the dictates of the vice and virtue ministry. The effect is the formal erasure of autonomous civic space. Economic, educational and recreational institutions are folded into a nationwide system of surveillance.
The directive goes further still. It declares that every Muslim has a duty to stop “evil deeds.” If someone witnesses a major sin, they must intervene physically if possible; if not, they should speak out against it. In practice, this instruction allows, and even requires, ordinary citizens to enforce morality rules against women. When the state frames intervention as a religious obligation, the boundary between law enforcement and vigilantism begins to blur. Women have since reported increased harassment in public spaces, including verbal abuse and men confronting them over their clothing or movement.
THE QURAN TEACHER in Herat was told to get into the Taliban officers’ vehicle and be taken to their office, or to call her father. “My hands and feet were shaking. I didn’t know what to do,” she said. People walked past. No one intervened. “They tried not to look at me so they wouldn’t get into trouble themselves,” she recalled.
She called her father. When he arrived, he was shaking too. He has diabetes. “They told him, ‘Why did you allow your daughter to leave the house alone, with un-Islamic clothing?’” she recounted. They also called him an ‘infidel’ for allowing this. “One of them said to my father, ‘It would have been better if you had shot your daughter rather than let her come out like this.’”
The Quran teacher and her father were thrown into the back of the vehicle and taken to the Directorate of Vice and Virtue in Herat, housed in the facilities of what was, before 2021, the department of women’s affairs.
What she experienced was not an isolated act of street harassment by overzealous officers. It was the visible edge of a legal architecture the Taliban has constructed that defines women as potential sources of moral disorder. According to Taliban doctrine, the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice is the most important and fundamental function of governance. Controlling women’s presence in public is central to that mission.
Restrictions on women’s dress and public presence were enforced from the outset of the Taliban’s return, which followed the fall of republican Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US troops in August 2021. This was done through a mix of intimidation, arrests and local directives. In May 2022, these practices were hardened into policy when the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued a decree declaring the burqa – an outer garment that covers a woman’s face and body with a mesh screen over the eyes to see through – as the preferred form of hijab and holding male guardians responsible for women’s compliance. Two years later, these rules were further codified as law and published in the official gazette of the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice.
In July 2024, the ministry published its “Law on Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”, a sweeping document outlining how the morality police should regulate public life. Among its central provisions is a detailed definition of what the Taliban consider acceptable hijab. The document says that sharia-compliant hijab refers to clothing that covers the entire body and face of a woman from non-mahram or unrelated men and must not be thin, short or tight. The law further elaborates that covering the entire body is obligatory and that concealing the face is necessary due to the fear of fitna – temptation or social disorder.
The law extends beyond clothing too. The document declares that women’s voices – as heard when singing songs, or when reciting or speaking in gatherings – are also considered aurat, something that must be concealed. It states that if a woman leaves her home for a necessary reason, she must conceal her voice, her face and her body.
The law also defines the aurat of men – but far less restrictively. “The aurat of a man extends from below the navel to the knees, and the knees are also considered part of the aurat.” In practice, this means the Taliban’s religious police must ensure that men cover their thighs in places such as sports stadiums, gyms and swimming pools.
For women, the restrictions govern nearly every aspect of public presence, with far-reaching consequences. If a woman’s voice itself is considered something that must be concealed, even ordinary interactions in public life – such as speaking to a shopkeeper, negotiating with a taxi driver, or asking for directions – can be interpreted as legal transgressions. The law assigns the task of enforcing these rules to the morality police, known as muhtasib. Their responsibilities include preventing “the sound of a woman’s voice or music being heard outside the home or a gathering.”
The law also regulates transportation. Authorities are required to prevent women without hijab from using vehicles, to stop women from sitting with unrelated men, and to ensure that women do not use transportation when not accompanied by a male guardian.
The enforcement mechanisms outlined in the law begin with giving advice but quickly escalate beyond that. They include intimidation, threats invoking divine punishment, destruction of property, detention for hours or days, and “any punishment the muhtasib deems appropriate” that does not fall under formal court jurisdiction.
This legal structure helps explain the encounter that led to the detention of the Quran teacher on a Herat roadside.
SINCE THE TALIBAN returned to power, enforcement of these rules has varied by province. In late December 2023 and January 2024, the Taliban carried out a sweeping hijab enforcement operation in Kabul, setting up checkpoints and arresting women and girls, particularly in neighbourhoods such as Dasht-e-Barchi with a large population of the Hazara, a persecuted Shia minority in Sunni-majority Afghanistan. Women who later spoke to Zan Times described detention lasting days or weeks, as well as physical abuse and intimidation in custody. Some reported sexual harassment and assault during interrogations. The psychological impact was severe: at least one young woman took her own life after her release. The body of Marina Sadat, who had been picked up by the morality police in December 2023, was found 22 days later in a sack on the outskirts of Kabul.
Taliban officials later denied the arrests and rejected allegations of abuse. The checkpoints now established in Herat suggest a return to that same tactic. The Quran teacher is also Shia, like many of the women targeted in Kabul, but the crackdown in Herat was not exclusive to Shia neighbourhoods. It targeted any woman who stepped out of her home without the Taliban-mandated hijab, now requiring the burqa.
The enforcement has been aggressive, systematic and publicly visible. In November 2025, morality police began targeting female doctors and hospital staff, barring women without burqas from entering medical facilities. A female doctor was reportedly arrested for not wearing a burqa. Soon afterwards, female primary school teachers were ordered to comply with the same dress code or lose their jobs.
A 38-year-old teacher in Herat now wears a blue burqa just to keep her job. “For one week, I carried it in my bag,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to put it on.” She describes a reversal of dignity. “When I wore my teacher’s uniform, people respected me. Now, wearing a burqa, the same society mocks me.”
She explained that she cannot walk steadily while wearing a burqa because the face covering did not allow her to see properly. Some days earlier, “I saw a street vendor laughing at me. I feel ashamed, ” she said. “I pray to God not to give me a daughter. A girl in Afghanistan is a slave.”
By January 2026, the enforcement campaign moved into the streets. In recent months, it has escalated: male barbers have been arrested for trimming beards; women have been barred from restaurants; live images have been banned from television; and, of course, women’s clothing has become the central target.
At the centre of this in Herat Province is Azizurrahman Mohajer, who was appointed the local head of vice and virtue in November 2021 and is still in the post. “He wants to get closer to Hibatullah,” a journalist in Herat said, referring to the Taliban supreme leader. “He carries out these terrifying actions so he will be praised by the leader.”
In December 2025, Mohajer had bragged in a closed-door meeting with media professionals that he is a close friend of the Taliban leader and will “implement all of his decrees.” Journalists say even the provincial governor feels compelled to obey his orders.
Mohajer did not respond to questions submitted to his office.
AT THE Directorate of Vice and Virtue in Herat, the Quran teacher and her father were held for four hours, insulted and “guided”. She recalled that the muhtasib called each other “mawlavi sahib” – a title used for Islamic scholars. “One of them said to my father, ‘A daughter is like chocolate. If she comes out without hijab, people will eat her sweetness.’”
They forced her father to sign a written pledge promising he would never again allow his daughter to leave the house in “non-Islamic hijab”.
Shortly after noon, she was released. She returned home in shock. Her father went back to work, head bowed. “I have not left my house since those incidents, I am always fearful, even in my sleep,” she told us in a WhatsApp message in February. “In the eyes of the Taliban, women and girls are worthless, they are sinful. And I wish I was not born a girl in Afghanistan.”
