New Taliban Rules Impose Chaperones on Afghan Women

Women in Afghanistan are struggling with new Taliban rules requiring them to be accompanied by a male relative, one in a series of measures that they say threaten to squeeze them out of public and professional life.

The official new rules don’t bar women from traveling alone near their homes. The Taliban, who took power in Afghanistan in August, banned women last month from traveling more than 48 miles without a mahram, or male guardian, based on the group’s hard-line interpretation of Islam.

However, women across the country say guardianship rules are being imposed on a far wider scale, and include needing a male relative to join them for basic tasks such as entering government buildings, seeing a doctor or catching a taxi.

The guardianship rules come as the Taliban are curbing women’s rights in other ways. On Wednesday, the Taliban reneged on their promise to reopen schools for girls over sixth grade, which had been closed since the Islamist group captured Afghanistan. Teenage boys returned to secondary school in September.

When and how the guardianship restrictions are applied is often left up to the whims of the Taliban’s religious morality police. Women and rights groups say these forces tend to be more aggressive outside big cities.

In the southeastern province of Ghazni, the Taliban’s religious-police forces have been especially harsh, residents say. They routinely inspect taxis to make sure there are no unaccompanied women. Women aren’t allowed to enter the local passport office without a man.

Hospitals and clinics in various parts of Ghazni are now barred from treating women for all kinds of ailments unless they show up with a husband, a father, a son, an uncle or a brother.

 “Their mobile patrol is constantly coming to hospitals in our district to see if there are female patients without male guardians,” said Fahima, a doctor in Ghazni.

She said she declined to treat two female patients who showed up at her hospital because they weren’t accompanied by a male relative. One had pregnancy complications. The other had a gynecological problem.

“I had to turn them away,” said the doctor, who didn’t want her full name used. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Fahima, 42 years old, said she didn’t think the religious police would be so strict about enforcing these kinds of rules until they found a woman without a male guardian during an inspection of the hospital four months ago. The woman was hit with a rifle, she said.

“They threaten us, they tell us that if we treat a woman without a male guardian they will beat us up,” the doctor said. Fahima now turns away female patients on a regular basis.

Akif Muhajer, a spokesman for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue, to whom the religious police formally reports, said the ministry didn’t issue such an order. “Women can go to work, shop and visit relatives up to 78 kilometers without a male guardian. That’s a right given to them by the Shariah,” or Islamic law, he said.

He denied that women in Ghazni had been refused medical care, calling it propaganda.

When the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan last year, leaders said they would respect women’s rights within the limits of Islam. In the 1990s, the Taliban barred women from getting an education and from most jobs. Women were required to be accompanied by a man at all times and wear a head-to-toe, face-covering burqa.

Younger women who enjoyed the relative freedom of the past 20 years—and have no memory of the Taliban from the 1990s—are gradually coming to grips with what it means to live under Taliban rule, often for the first time.

The place of women in society remains an issue that divides Taliban leadership and fuels tension with the movement’s hard-line foot soldiers.

That division is reflected in policy. This month, the first group of female police officers graduated from a Taliban-run police academy. Women are encouraged, but not required, to wear burqas. Primary schools for girls are open, and women can attend college. But the male guardianship rule applies to women wanting to study abroad, an impossible-to-meet requirement for most women.

Already, women have vanished from politics and most female civil servants—who previously made up a fourth of all staff—have been told to stay at home indefinitely. Fearful of coming face-to-face with Taliban foot soldiers, many women say they are simply too scared to venture outdoors.

The inability of women to move about freely hinders them from accessing their other rights, said Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch. “Women who do go out without a mahram are being harassed and stopped and detained and blocked from doing the things they need to do.”

Among the women denied medical care in Ghazni was Nikbakht, a widow in her 60s. She had to skip several rounds of kidney treatment because Taliban guards wouldn’t let her enter the main provincial hospital in Ghazni without a male relative. Her son is blind and couldn’t accompany her.

 “I told the Talib that receiving medical treatment is more important than whether or not I have a mahram,” said Nikbakht, who goes by a single name. “He said he didn’t care about what happened to my son or to my husband, and that these were orders from above.”

The ban on women being outside the home without a male relative extended to humanitarian groups working in northern Afghanistan. In January, religious police in a northern province tried to prevent local women from being at the office without a male relative by their side at all times, according to internal memos seen by The Wall Street Journal. Following negotiations between international nongovernmental organizations and senior Taliban officials, that restriction was eased.

Rules requiring females to have a male escort exist elsewhere in the Muslim world, but there is no consensus about when, or whether, it should apply. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, recently abolished most of its male guardianship requirements. Saudi women can now do things such as travel abroad, register child birth or marry without their male guardian’s permission. As of last year women were able to perform the hajj, the holy pilgrimage to the Saudi city of Mecca, alone.

For some men, the imposition of the Taliban’s male guardianship rules is a nuisance. Sharif, a resident of Ghazni who didn’t want his full name used, said since the Taliban took over his district, he has had to accompany his wife whenever she goes outdoors, even grocery shopping.

“It’s difficult for both men and women,” said Sharif. “No other Muslim country has imposed restrictions like the Taliban have on us. These restrictions are a product of their own mentality. They have nothing to do with Islam.”

Male guardianship rules are also affecting women in urban centers such as Kabul, where women have particularly active lives.

Husna Mohammadi, an emergency room doctor, said that—for the first time—a taxi driver near her home in central Kabul recently refused to pick her up because she didn’t have a male relative with her.

While most days she is still able to get a taxi without a male guardian, she worries it will get harder. A nurse colleague who works at the same hospital has repeatedly missed days of work—and risks being fired—because in her neighborhood, on the outskirts of Kabul, the local Taliban are enforcing a strict ban on taxi drivers picking up unaccompanied women.

“Drivers don’t pick up women who are alone because they are afraid of the Taliban,” said Dr. Mohammadi, 25, who works in Kabul’s main children’s hospital. “The intimidation is increasing, the restrictions are increasing.”