Valentine’s Day is a loveless affair under the Taliban morality police

Burst red balloons littered the walkway alongside a row of flower shops in Kabul the day after Valentine’s Day — evidence of a forceful clampdown by the Taliban’s feared morality police.

“The Taliban were very violent,” said a florist whose shop was visited by representatives of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (MoPVPV).

“They destroyed flowers and popped balloons. Those who took photos of what they were doing had their phones confiscated and broken. They beat balloon sellers in the street.”

The florist, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal, said that the agents had arrived in vehicles marked MoPVPV. Like the other flower sellers in the row, his investment in gifts and flowers, intended to celebrate love and romance, was in tatters.

Muhammad Sadiq Akif, a spokesman for the ministry, denied allegations that its officials were violent, but added that Valentine’s Day was haram: sinful and not part of Afghan culture.

The ministry became notorious for grotesque, bloody punishments carried out in the name of sharia under the Taliban’s tyrannical rule during the late 1990s. Its officials patrolled the streets with rifles, beating men whose beards were too short or women who showed bare wrists or ankles.

The de facto government claims to be taking a less hardline approach six months since the Taliban returned to Kabul. This week’s events suggest that their tactics are not exactly soft.

Taliban edicts are not always enforced with violence. Tailors said they were told last month to remove mannequins’ heads, claiming they “go against sharia”, although they noted that the officials were polite.

“They said we should remove these mannequins or cut off their heads. They cost me $65 each so I’ve put plastic bags over the heads instead,” said Sayed Maroof, a shop owner.

Other shop owners were less concerned.

“[The Taliban] told us to cut off the mannequins’ heads but I have not, and they have been through this street since and there has been no problem,” Mohammad Nasir, 33, said.

Throughout the city, images of women, used in beauty salons and shop windows, have been covered up after instructions by the ministry.

It put up posters urging women to wear the hijab, considered by the Taliban as a full-face covering, except for the eyes, and issued guidelines to salons to inform customers what is expected of women.

 “Sharia is committed to the safety and wellbeing of women,” Akif told The Times.

Likening women to a pot of honey when arguing for the restrictions, he said: “When flies try to get into the honey pot, you screw the lid on to stop the flies. There is no point trying to swat the flies away.”

“The western world told Afghan women that freedom was their right but that’s not women’s rights,” said his colleague, Muli Raz Mohammad Hamid, who heads the security forces training section of the ministry. “Women’s rights are about women knowing their limits; it is about them being protected.”

Asking shopkeepers to cover up pictures of women seems a far cry from the Taliban’s former reign of terror, when wives accused of adultery were stoned to death in Kabul’s football stadium.

Agents of the ministry were notoriously brutal, so a decision to reinstate it after the fall of Kabul, while abolishing the women’s affairs ministry, was met with panic. However, the ministry claims to be reforming itself, saying western media exaggerated its reputation. Each of Kabul’s 22 police districts has a team of ten ministry representatives, all of whom must be religious scholars. Faqirullah Khaliqiar, 49, heads the MoPVPV team in Kabul’s fifth police district. He said his team travelled in hatchbacks rather than police 4x4s and did not carry weapons, although they have armed guards.

“Each day we’re given different tasks. That could be visiting markets to see what the problems are and how we can help, for example,” he said.

On patrol, when a shop owner tried to highlight the impact of the economic crisis on his business, Khaliqiar told him not to talk about it.

Last month in the northwest province of Badghis, the head of the local MoPVPV issued guidelines to international humanitarian organisations instructing women to wear burqas or they would be shot. The edict was taken to officials in Kabul to be quashed.