Taliban Ambush Dasht-e-Barchi Girls; Arrest or Disappearance?
Local sources in western Kabul report that the Taliban group continues to arrest women and girls in the Dasht-e-Barchi district; an act that has once again exposed the oppressive and misogynistic face of this group.
According to sources, Taliban forces raided the Qala-e-No and Sark-e-20-Meter areas on Wednesday morning, July 30, and arrested and took away a number of women and girls for “not having a legal guardian.”
Eyewitnesses say that this operation was carried out without prior warning and continues in complete silence. In some cases, the detainees have been transferred to an unknown location without the families’ knowledge, and there is no information about their fate.
After returning to power, the Taliban group has imposed strict laws against women that make travel, education, work, and even daily movement conditional on the presence of a legal guardian.
Arbitrary arrests, torture, intimidation, and disappearances against women have become commonplace under the pretext of these laws.
Reports indicate that similar mass arrests have also taken place in other areas of Kabul in recent weeks and days, and some of the disappeared women have not yet been returned to their families.
This trend, in addition to being a clear violation of human rights, is a clear warning about the expansion of the Taliban’s psychological terror against Afghan women.
The continuous arrests of women solely for the crime of not having a mahram are indicative of a systematic policy of social exclusion of women under the shadow of an extremist government that does not hesitate to use any legitimate or illegitimate means to suppress them.
