Taliban issues fresh warning to Afghan women: Shut secret beauty salons in a month or face arrest | World News
The Taliban have escalated their crackdown on Afghan women, issuing a stern warning to those running secret underground beauty salons to close within a month or face arrest, The Guardian reported.
Although all beauty salons were officially closed in August 2023, leading to the shutdown of 12,000 businesses and leaving over 50,000 women beauticians unemployed, many secret salons have continued to operate within local communities.
Frestha, a 38-year-old mother of three, told The Guardian she had been running her salon in secrecy since the ban because she had no other means to support her family. “When the Taliban closed our salons, I was the only breadwinner in my family; my husband was sick, and I had three children whose expenses I had to cover,” she said.
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“But also I kept working because I feel so good when I could bring beauty back to a woman. When a woman looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, her happiness became my happiness.
“Now, I don’t think I can keep going because the risk is too high [but] I don’t know any other work. Our situation is very bad, but in this world there is no one to hear our voice or support us,” she added.
Why Taliban banned beauty salons
The Taliban at that time stated that the decision to ban beauty salons was based on the belief that they provided services prohibited Islam and placed financial burdens on the families of grooms during wedding celebrations.
The Taliban have now instructed community leaders and elders to identify clandestine beauty businesses and report those running them to the “vice and virtue” police. The ruling is the latest curb on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls following barring them from education, public spaces and most forms of employment.Story continues below this ad
Although the Taliban initially pledged to govern more moderately compared to their rule in the 1990s, they have enforced strict restrictions since taking control of Afghanan in August 2021, following the withdrawal of United States and NATO forces.
Since then, women have faced sweeping restrictions, such as being barred from most forms of paid employment and prevented from attending secondary schools or universities. Human rights groups say the regime enforces a de facto system of gender apartheid, severely restricting women’s participation in public life.
Alongside the closure of beauty salons, women are barred from gyms and other communal spaces, forbidden from walking in public parks alone, required to be fully covered in public, must travel with a male chaperone, and are not allowed to speak in public.
