July 21, 2025
Silk Way Weekly: Local sources and eyewitnesses in western Kabul say that agents of the Taliban’s Ministry of Encouraging Good and Preventing Evil have arrested a significant number of girls in this city.
The incident took place on Saturday (July 19) in various locations in the 13th district, including Resalat Alley, Ahmadian Market, and the Barchi City Center store. According to sources, the arrests were made on charges of not observing the Taliban’s hijab requirements and not fully covering themselves.
A resident of Resalat Alley of Barchi told the Silk Way Weekly that he was in the Resalat Alley market before noon on Saturday and saw a Taliban PKK officer violently addressing a girl: “Girl! Pull the veil down properly.”
The source added that on the same day, during the arrest and transfer of the girls from the same area, her mother saw that the girls arrested in the Taliban vehicle had covered their faces with veils and hands so that others would not recognize them.
According to this source, the girls were fleeing to the side streets of the area and said that the Taliban would take the girls out of the shops, put them in cars, and tell them, “You don’t have a hijab. You put on makeup. You put on a dress and go from one shop to another.”
Another reliable source who witnessed the arrest of a girl on a road twenty meters west of Kabul three days ago said: “It was three days ago. There were people gathered on the road, I didn’t understand what happened when a girl ran away from the area and said, ‘Did you see, auntie, that girl was picked up by a car?’ They threw a black pouch at her head and took her away.”
Another source witnessed the arrest of a girl from the Pul-e-Khoshk area of Kabul two weeks ago. He said: “I didn’t see the girl’s face, but I saw that her clothes were yellow. Two women wearing masks forced her into a car. The girl resisted a lot, but she was unsuccessful.”
These arrests have sparked strong reactions. The Human Rights Defenders Forum issued a statement last night calling the action a “mass, arbitrary, and misogynistic detention” and strongly condemning it.
Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, a jihadi figure and leader of Islamic Dawah of Afghanistan, and a leading member of the National Assembly for the Salvation of Afghanistan, wrote on his X-Page: “Taliban, fear God.” He also wrote that “the arrest and detention of women by non-mahram men and their taking to prisons where men are the jailers is not only against religion and Sharia, but it also violates Islamic honor and Afghan pride.”
The Afghanistan Freedom Front has condemned the arrest of women in Kabul. Journalist Lina Rozbeh Haidari and writer Humaira Qaderi have also reacted to the arrest of women by the Taliban. A large number of social media users have also condemned the arrests and expressed their concern about the move.
On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, the Taliban had also arrested dozens of girls from Shahr-e-Naw, Kabul, some of whom were said to be hairdressers. According to reports, some of them have been released, but the fate of the others is still unknown.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s Ministry of The Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has denied arresting women and girls, but has said that the group’s agents have advised women and girls about wearing the hijab. Saif al-Islam Khaybar, a spokesman for The Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, denied this claim in an interview with BBC Persian, saying that no women in Kabul have been arrested by them.
Last year, for the first time, the government carried out widespread arrests of women in the provinces of Kabul, Balkh, Bamyan, Daikundi, and Ghazni.
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