The Taliban urges employed Afghan women to temporarily stay indoors until fighters of the terrorist group are trained in respecting and dealing with women.
“Our security forces are not trained [in] how to deal with women—how to speak to women,” the group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday, referring to some fighters in the group.
“We have asked them [women] to take time off from work until the situation gets back to a normal order and women-related procedures are in place, then they can return to their jobs once it’s announced,” he advised, noting that it is for Afghan women’s own safety and the guidance will be short-term.
The instructions come as Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations (UN) high commissioner for human rights, also on Tuesday, announced she obtained credible reports that restrictions on the rights of women were found to be taking place in many regions under effective Taliban control across the beleaguered Central Asian nation.
Bachelet warned that dishonorable treatment of women and girls would be “a fundamental red line” during an emergency meeting with the UN Human Rights Council that was being held at the request of Pakistan and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
When the Taliban was in power last time between 1996 and 2001 prior to U.S.-led military operation two decades ago, the terrorist group banned women from the workplace and nearly all women were mostly confined to their homes.
They also forbid women from leaving the home unaccompanied and forced them to cover their entire bodies.
Although the Taliban recently announced a general amnesty, explaining the group would present itself as more moderate, saying women can work and go to school and university, recent reports of violence allegedly committed by the group claim otherwise.
Last month, as the terrorist group was seizing territory from government forces across Afghanistan, Taliban fighters walked into the offices of Azizi Bank in the southern city of Kandahar and ordered nine women working there to leave.
“It’s really strange to not be allowed to get to work, but now this is what it is,” Noor Khatera, a 43-year-old woman who had worked in the accounts department of the bank told news agency Reuters. “I taught myself English and even learned how to operate a computer, but now I will have to look for a place where I can just work with more women around.”
Two days after the episode at Azizi Bank, a similar scene played out at a branch of another Afghan lender, Bank Milli, in the western city of Herat, according to two female cashiers who witnessed it.
Three Taliban terrorists carrying guns entered the branch, admonishing female employees for showing their faces in public. The women there then quit, sending male relatives in their place.
Reports of violence against Afghan women is an early sign that some of the rights won by women over the 20 years since Taliban extremist Islamic law ruled the nation could likely be reversed.
Reuters contributed to this report.
