Taliban unleash new crackdown on women with 20 dragged off the street by female guards and beaten in jail for breaking morality rules
The Taliban's morality police detained at least 20 women and girls in Kabul on Saturday, dragging them into vehicles and beating them for alleged breaches of the regime's strict dress code, according to footage and witness accounts obtained by Afghan broadcaster Amu TV. The incident marks an escalation in the Taliban's ongoing suppression of women's rights five years after seizing power, with witnesses describing violent scenes including a pregnant woman being struck and dragged away despite her husband's pleas.
Footage showed hijab-wearing women being beaten as they were apprehended, and one victim described being grabbed by the collar, slapped and forced to wear a face mask before fighting back against her captors. The women were later released after families and community representatives provided guarantees on their behalf. The arrests follow a pattern of similar crackdowns this year, including the detention of nine women in Herat last month despite them wearing hijabs, reports of increasing street patrols in Kabul, a ban on female doctors in Panjshir working without a burqa, and a June protest against the morality police in Herat that left one person dead when officials opened fire on demonstrators.
- Taliban morality police beat and detained 20 women in Kabul
- Victims included a pregnant woman; all later released
- Part of wider 2026 crackdown on Afghan women's freedoms
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The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021, and since then have gradually reimposed strict rules on how women and girls must dress and behave in public, enforced by a dedicated morality police force. These rules typically require women to wear hijabs or, in some areas, full-face burqas, and restrict their movement and work outside the home, including bans on girls' secondary education and most female employment.
Kabul is Afghanistan's capital, and the morality police there are tasked with policing compliance with the dress code, sometimes detaining women accused of breaking it. Similar enforcement actions have occurred in other cities this year, including Herat, where a protest against the morality police in June ended with a fatal shooting by officials.
The treatment of women under Taliban rule has drawn sustained international criticism and is widely regarded as one of the most restrictive systems of gender-based control in the world today, with the United Nations and rights groups tracking such incidents as part of a broader pattern of curbs on women's freedoms since 2021.
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The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of the morality police's mandate argue that Afghanistan's population overwhelmingly desires governance rooted in their interpretation of Islamic law, and that visible enforcement of modest dress is a religious and cultural obligation rather than an arbitrary imposition, reflecting values the Taliban see as restoring moral order after decades of foreign-influenced secularism. They contend that officials are entitled to set and enforce public conduct standards within their own sovereign territory, just as other states enforce their own laws, and that outside criticism often reflects a double standard or a refusal to respect a different cultural and religious framework.
The case against
Critics argue that dragging women and girls off the street, beating a pregnant woman despite her husband's pleas, and detaining those already wearing hijabs reveals enforcement untethered even from the regime's own stated rules, amounting to state violence against women rather than legitimate order-keeping. They hold that basic protections against arbitrary detention and physical assault are universal human rights that no cultural or religious justification can override, and that a pattern of escalating crackdowns, bans on female professionals, and lethal force against protesters shows a systematic campaign to erase women from public life rather than a proportionate moral code.