Ahmad could not sleep. His 18-year-old sister Somaya had been dragged into a Taliban morality police vehicle and taken to Herat prison. When she came home the morning after her arrest, she could not eat or drink, and could not stop shaking. She begged the family to lock the doors, close the windows, and let no one leave the house. Ahmad did not dare ask her what happened inside.
For two nights after her return, Ahmad could not sleep. As he watched her, he came across a message that was circulating on social media: “Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8 a.m. in district 13 of Jibrayil, at the Bahar-e-Zindagi intersection, join hands to defend the rights of our sisters.”
Ahmad made a decision.
“I said, ‘Even if it costs me my life, I will go and defend my sister’s rights and the rights of all women,’” he recounts to Zan Times. “Even if a bullet hits me, I will go and protest.”
On the morning of Tuesday, June 9, Ahmad went to the western Jibrayil neighbourhood, which is a predominantly Hazara neighbourhood where dozens of women had been arrested in recent days for alleged violations of the Taliban’s dress code. He was not alone. In what witnesses and protesters described as a rare act of collective defiance, women and men took to the streets together, chanting, “Education, work, freedom.”
Within minutes, the Taliban opened fire.
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women across Afghanistan have lived under a steadily tightening system of surveillance and punishment over their dress and their presence in public. What began as verbal “advice” in 2021 hardened into a supreme leader’s decree in May 2022, declaring the burqa the preferred form of hijab. In August 2024, it was codified as law — the Law on Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — giving the morality police sweeping authority to detain, intimidate, and punish women whose clothing did not comply with Taliban standards.
The enforcement of those Taliban laws had come to Herat in a series of intensifying waves. In January 2026, as Zan Times reported, morality police set up checkpoints across the city, pulling women from taxis, arresting anyone wearing a manto — the traditional long coat worn by generations of women in the city — rather than the Taliban-mandated black chador or burqa. Girls as young as 12 and women in their 70s were detained. That campaign drew widespread community pushback. The checkpoints became less visible. But the harassment, intimation, and arrest of women over hijab never stopped.
On June 4, the Herat governor reportedly met personally with a group of morality enforcers. Two days later, the most recent crackdown began. According to witnesses, there was particular emphasis on Shia-majority neighbourhoods.
On the afternoon of Friday, June 5, Taliban officials used the end of Friday prayers to distribute a public announcement across Herat: women who failed to comply with the Islamic dress code would be arrested. The next morning, the arrests began.
On Saturday June 6, dozens of women had been detained across multiple neighbourhoods — Darb-e-Malik, Shahr-e-Naw, Ab Burda, Jibrayil, and Haji Abbas neighborhoods. By Sunday, June 7, the United Nations had confirmed at least 30 women were in custody for alleged dress code violations. “Dozens more women reportedly received verbal warnings,” UNAMA said in a statement.
One of those women detained by the Taliban is Angela. She had recently returned to Afghanistan from Iran and was walking with her sister when they were arrested, she says to Zan Times. For 24 hours, she recounts, Taliban officers treated them with deliberate cruelty. They confiscated her phone and scrolled through her personal photos in front of others, mocking them. One Taliban member tried to coerce her into marriage. She and her sister were released only after their male relatives paid a bribe of 13,000 afghani to the Vice and Virtue directorate.
Somaya, Ahmad’s sister, was wearing a manto when she was arrested on Sunday afternoon. She was shopping with her cousin, who wore a black chador. Her cousin wasn’t arrested but Somaya was forced into a Taliban vehicle, taken first to the Vice and Virtue directorate and then to Herat prison. Her family spent hours driving through the city looking for her. When they arrived at the prison, Taliban guards refused to let them see her. Ahmad was told to sign a written pledge, promising he would never allow his sister to leave the house in “non-Islamic” clothing in exchange for her release the following morning. After he signed, they handed him her sister’s bag and told him to come back tomorrow for her sister.
“When my mother saw her belongings in my hands,” Ahmad tells Zan Times, “it was as if I had brought a corpse home.”
Sima*, 20, saw the social media post and made up her mind to attend without telling her family. She had just finished eighth grade when the Taliban came to power and was never allowed back into school. “I decided to participate,” she tells Zan Times. “My family had no idea. They found out when I came home.”
According to Sima, roughly 20 women and 90 men had gathered at the intersection in the Jibrayil neighbourhood by 8:15 a.m. on Tuesday, June 9. When the women began to chant, the men joined them.
Men marching and chanting slogans alongside women have rarely been seen in previous women’s rights protests in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover. “We said, ‘if the Taliban come, we will continue peacefully,’” Ahmad says to Zan Times. “But the Taliban attacked with guns, sticks, and stones with complete shamelessness.”
Sima was able to see the escalation of violence aimed at the protesters. First, a few armed soldiers and several plainclothes officers watched the marcher. Then they moved in, beating people and trying to scatter the crowd. The crowd did not stop. Next, the Taliban fired into the air. The crowd scattered in small groups, but continued their protest, moving in different directions. Then, the Taliban fired directly at the protesters.
Nasrin, 22, was standing close enough to see a 12-year-old child hit by gunfire. “The blood of that child on the road, I will never forget it,” she tells Zan Times.
At least one child and a woman were killed. After independently verifying the events, Human Rights Watch said the Taliban “used excessive force” against protesters, including beating people and shooting into the crowds. More than 10 people were wounded. Some, fearing arrest at hospitals, did not seek treatment. Dozens were detained and taken to unknown locations.
Ahmad was beaten with a stick while continuing to chant protest slogans. He watched Taliban soldiers beat a young man unconscious in front of him. He kept moving. Though injured, Ahmad returned home at 5 p.m.. By then, Taliban forces were already going house to house through Jibrayil, searching for protesters, examining phones for videos, and looking for anyone who participated that day. Ahmad took his family to stay with a distant relative.
“The Taliban authorities fear any dissent and so are escalating their repression of free expression and other basic rights,” says Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should cease these attacks and ensure that Afghans can protest peacefully without fear of violence or arrest.”
Some of the women arrested last week were eventually released. But release, as UNAMA noted in its statement on the events, doesn’t mean safety for Afghan women.
“A woman’s detention in Afghanistan carries enormous stigma, which can put women at risk of further violence and isolation in their families and communities even after they are released,” said Georgette Gagnon, the secretary-general’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan.
That fear is real. Even during the warm days of June, Nilab, 26, wears a burqa when she goes out to attend a secret English class. “The heat makes me feel sick,” she explains to Zan Times. “But fear of detention has made me accept this.”
Nilab, who was in her final year of university when the Taliban stopped women from attending, explains that detention is particularly devastating in Afghan society because it is not only the trauma of what happens inside, but what follows outside. “Our society is very traditional and limited,” she says. “Even most male family members tell their women, ’If you go out and get arrested by the Taliban, we are not interested in dealing with this group, and we will not go through the process of getting you out of Taliban prison.’”
The protest in Jibrayil on June 9 lasted less than half an hour. The Taliban crushed it. Since then, Taliban intelligence has not rested as it targets for arrest anyone who supported the women, joined the march, or raised their voice. As the crackdown continued, women were driven deeper into fear and isolation.
Gawharshad* contributed to this report. *Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer.
