Afghan women face another restriction as the Taliban crackdown extends beyond real life
Five years have passed since the Taliban takeover began in Afghanistan, and women and girls have been deprived of almost all of their fundamental rights.
As reported by UN Women, since the extremist militia came into power in August 2021, more than 100 decrees have been issued, targeting all aspects of life from education and movement to access to justice, employment, and healthcare.
More than half of women now report leaving their homes only twice a month or less; there is a systematic ban on girls attending high school and women attending university, while a 2026 decree abolished legal equality between men and women before the law, placing husbands in a position of legal authority over their wives and limiting women’s ability to seek justice.
The UN has described Afghanistan as a 'global outlier with no parallel in the modern world', and warned that the exclusion of women and girls has intensified significantly over the past year.
And now, the authoritarian regime has expanded beyond real life and onto social media, with one woman speaking out about being detained for posting photos and videos of her ‘daily life and promotions for local businesses’.
After being reported to the Taliban by her own family, 26-year-old Somaiya told Rukhshana Media how her posts attracted the attention of local authorities, which led to her being summoned to the Taliban’s vice and virtue department in the Afghan city of Herat.
She hoped that she would be given a warning and told to stop, but instead she said she was interrogated and transported to Herat’s women’s prison.
Somaiya told the outlet: “I kept saying I would sign a written pledge that I would no longer post my photographs. I begged and pleaded with them, but they took me to prison and said I had to be detained for 72 hours.”
She said that during her interrogation, she was told by officials that it was her own relatives who reported her as they disapproved of her social media activity.
Somaiya claimed that, heartbreakingly, some of them wanted her to remain in detention and even said that she should spend years behind bars.
The 26-year-old was finally released after she signed a pledge to stop all of her social media activity, having now deleted all of her content and paid promotions that had allowed her to earn some money.
“They have used ‘ghairat’ as an excuse to object to my images,” she added.
The publication reports that ‘ghairat’ is a ‘concept of family honour that is bound up with the protection of female relatives’, but is often used to justify the control of women.
And sadly, Somaiya isn’t the only one to experience this, as another Afghan woman, Aliya, 18, had around 60,000 followers on Instagram before she was detained and taken to prison last year.
She too would make a small amount of money by promoting local businesses and posting about her life in Herat.
Aliya was released after three nights in jail, after pledging not to use social media again.
She told the publication: “They told me that even if I wore a mask, it was not acceptable for me to work and advertise. They said Islam does not say that a woman should appear on television or on a screen, and that this was considered a crime.”
It comes amid a worsening mental health crisis in Afghanistan, with seven in 10 women describing their mental health as 'bad' or 'very bad', the UN Women reports.
Topics: Social Media, News, World News
Madison Burgess