By Ben Kerrigan-
The Taliban has shamefully shut down the women’s affairs ministry and replaced it with a department that once enforced strict religious doctrines.
This, despite its pledge to uphold women’s rights and not impose any constraints on the liberty of women.
On Friday, the sign at the ministry was removed, and substituted with a sign for the ministry of virtue and vice .orkers in Kabul were photographed on Friday replacing the sign on the women’s ministry building with a new one, which read, in a mixture of Dari and Arabic, “Ministries of Prayer and Guidance and the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”.
Videos on social media showed women employees outside the offices, urging the Taliban to let them return to work.
Early this week, a senior Taliban leader said earlier that women would not be allowed to work in government ministries with men.
The Taliban’s education ministry sparked fears that women would also be barred from going to school, after it released a statement on Facebook ordering all male students in grades six to 12 (ages 11 to 18) and male teachers to resume classes across Afghanista
During the Taliban rule in the 1990s, the ministry forced strict Islamic rules and harsh restrictions on women.
The U.S government was in Afghanistan for 20 years, but what was intended to be set up designed to stabilise the country has turned to a disastrous scenario of Taliban dominance, likely to bring the return of tyranny and archaic rule.
Women’s rights have progressively improved in Afghanistan, though at a slow pace. The general feleing is that even the gains made could be eroded by the new all mail interim government which conducted a sophisticated PR operation at the time of their take over, but are suspected of actually being as authouritarian and bullish as the group has ever been.
Taliban members say the institution is important: “The main purpose is to serve Islam. Therefore, it is compulsory to have [a] Ministry of Vice and Virtue,” a Taliban member, Mohammad Yousuf, told the New York Post.
The ministry was responsible for deploying so-called morality police into the streets to enforce the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic religious law, known as Sharia.
It became known for beating women who did not dress modestly or for being outside without a male guardian. Girls were not allowed to to be educated past primary school – a measure the group has now reportedly reintroduced.
The videos shared online, the women at the gates of what was the women’s ministry said they had been locked out on Thursday.
“I am the only breadwinner in my family,” said one of the women, according to reports. “When there is no ministry, what should an Afghan woman do?”
The Taliban stormed to power last month in a lightning advance across the war-ravaged country, as the former administration crumbled amid a chaotic withdrawal of US and other foreign troops.
The Taliban barred girls from attending school and women from working or taking up higher education when they were in power between 1996 and 2001.