The Taliban have just taken a new measure intended to further restrict the space allotted to women in their daily life: the local branch of the ministry of vice and virtue of the province of Balkh (North) said at the beginning of week that public baths would now be closed to Afghan women. The measure would be limited for the moment to this province and that of Herat, located in the west. But it is possible that this new provision will spread to other parts of Afghanistan.
The measure only concerns public baths, as private hammams are still open to Afghan women. But the representative of this ministry who decides what is Islamically correct or not specified that clients will have to wear the veil in the baths …
The new regulations are all the tougher as Afghanistan has entered a severe winter and many people lack running water and the means to buy firewood. It will therefore be the women who will bear the brunt of a measure that will make it difficult for them to meet basic hygiene conditions.
Call for help
Men are not forgotten by Taliban prudishness and will be subject to stricter requirements in public baths: according to Rumi Nematullah Abu Tariq, adviser for religious affairs in the province of Balkh, quoted by the Pakistani press agency IG News, the “Private parts of men must be hidden in hammams”. Being understood, he clarified, that the say “Parties” are going “From the bottom of the navel to below the knee”.
While the mullahs focus on these debates essential to life in society, the food situation is deteriorating across the country: the UN predicts that “97% of Afghans” risk living “Below the poverty line by the middle of the year”. According to the NGO International Rescue Committee, more than half of the 39 million Afghans will face in 2022 “To serious food problems”, nine million of them finding themselves in poor conditions “Near famine”.
The situation is so alarming that the Taliban Deputy Prime Minister, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, called on the international community for help in a statement released on Friday, January 7: “The world must support the Afghan people without any political bias and fulfill their humanitarian obligations. “