Taliban bar women from working for aid associations

KABUL — The Taliban government on Saturday ordered all foreign and domestic nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan to suspend employing women, allegedly because some female employees didn’t wear the Islamic headscarf correctly. They also separately banned women from attending religious classes at the mosques in the capital of Kabul.

The bans are the latest restrictive moves by Afghanistan’s new rulers against women’s rights and freedoms, coming just days after the Taliban banned female students from attending universities across the country.

Afghan women have since demonstrated in major cities against the ban — a rare sign of domestic protest since the Taliban seized power last year. The decision has also caused international outrage.

The NGO order came in a letter from Economy Minister Qari Din Mohammed Hanif, which declared that any organization found not complying with the order will have their operating license revoked. The ministry’s spokesman, Abdul Rahman Habib, confirmed the letter’s content to the Associated Press.

The ministry said it had received “serious complaints” about female staff working for NGOs not wearing the “correct” headscarf, or hijab. It was not immediately clear if the order applies to all women or only Afghan women working at the NGOs.

“It’s a heartbreaking announcement,” said Maliha Niazai, a trainer at an NGO teaching young people about issues such as gender-based violence. “Are we not human beings? Why are they treating us with this cruelty?”

In another edict, a spokesman for the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Fazil Mohammad Hussaini, said late Saturday that “adult girls” are barred from attending Islamic classes in mosques in Kabul, although they could still go to standalone madrassas, or religious schools. He did not explain why the measure only applies to Kabul mosques.

Earlier on Saturday, Taliban security forces used a water cannon to disperse women protesting the ban on university education for women in the western city of Herat, eyewitnesses said.

According to the witnesses, about two dozen women were heading to the Herat provincial governor’s house on Saturday to protest the ban — many chanting “education is our right” — when they were pushed back by security forces firing the water cannon.

Video shared with the AP shows the women screaming and hiding in a side street to escape the water cannon. They then resume their protest, with chants of “Disgraceful!”